dise

The beneficiarii consularis attached to governors of the later Principate comprise one of the most important elements in Roman provincial administration. They bulk large in the documentary record, appearing on papyri, in literary passages, and on over six hundred inscriptions erected between the middle of the second century and the middle of the third. Furthermore, these inscriptions are found in parts of the empire ranging from Arabia and Upper Egypt to the lower Rhine and Hadrian's Wall, and occur in a variety of settings: not only in towns and cities, but also in military sites and the countryside.

Given the prominent place occupied by beneficiarii consularis in the record, determining their function promises to offer valuable insights into how Rome went about running her empire. In particular, understanding beneficiarial functional would shed light on the internal operations of the administration, showing how the government employed the administrative resources available to it, and on the involvement of the imperial government in the daily life of the provincials.

Unfortunately, the title beneficiarius has no functional content. In this it differs from the titles of most other positions within the officium consularis, titles such as librarius, strator, or quaestionarius, which relate directly to the duties performed by the men who bore them. All that beneficiarii signifies is that its bearer had received a beneficium, in this case, relief from routine military duties for the purpose of attending the governor. Consequently, beneficiarius can be translated in a variety of ways. The two best are 'picked men,' which emphasizes the beneficium itself, and 'adjutant', which places weight on the relationship of the beneficiarius to the bestower of the beneficium. Both reflect the absence of any clear indication of beneficiarial function.

The functional emptiness of beneficiarius consularis has forced scholars to fall back on the documentary record in their effort to define beneficiarial activity. But each of the three types of evidence comprising the documentary record presents researchers with problems of interpretation. The mentions of beneficiarii in the second- and thirdcentury literary record are limited to two letters of Pliny the Younger,whole¹ a line in Tertullian's De fuga in persecutione,² a similarly brief passage in the account of the martyrdom of Fructuosus, bishop of Tarraco, in 259,³ and an incident in the vita Hadriani in the Historia Augusta.⁴ The chronological setting of some of this evidence — the letters of Pliny the Younger and the vita Hadriani — is early, before the appearance of beneficiarii consularis ca. 150, and therefore of uncertain relevance to the functions performed by beneficiarii consularis fifty to a hundred and fifty years later. Furthermore, the Historia Augusta is notorious for its inaccuracies and fabrications. The existing recession of the acta Fructuosi is late fourth century, and therefore may reflect late imperial employment of beneficiarii rather than that of the mid-third century.⁵ The papyrological evidence for beneficiarial function also suffers from dating problems. The bulk of it is late imperial, and can only be applied to late second and early third century situations with reservation. What little dates to the second and third centuries usually only alludes to their official duties. Furthermore, the papyrological evidence is Egyptian and of uncertain applicability elsewhere.

The inscriptions that provide the bulk of beneficiarial evidence are a complex body of texts. The great majority are either votive altars erected by serving beneficiarii consularis or funerary texts memorializing active or retired beneficiarii or their relatives. The votive altars mark locations where the men served, a paint underlined by references in some of the texts to stationes,⁶ by the discovery of the remains of statio-buildings associated with groups of altars,⁷ and by the scarcity of funerary texts at most sites where altars are found.⁸ Funerary texts seems most often to have been set up at the men's origines or at the places where they retired after discharge.

The problems posed by the inscriptions are more complex than those posed by the literary and papyrological evidence. The inscriptions express the gratitude of the beneficiarii or memorialize the men's lives, but in the vast majority of cases they say nothing about the duties which the men performed. Furthermore, the handful of texts which do contain or seem to contain information relating to function often prove on close examination to be either questionable in actual content or open to multiple interpretations. Additionally, the epigraphic evidence is strongly regional in character, varying dramatically in relative numbers, character, and distribution from one part of the empire to another, and even from one province or area of a province to another.

In light of the difficulties of the evidence, it should come as no surprise that no consensus has arisen on the problem of beneficiarial function, even though more than a dozen scholars have addressed the issue during the last hundred years. This failure of consensus has two origins. Its most fundamental source, of course, lies in the evidence itself, which says so little about function and is plagued by ambiguities and regional peculiarities which vastly complicate the task of functional definition. The other source of the failure is conceptual. Most scholars have sought to define some primary function or range of functions for beneficiarii. This effort seeks to mould beneficiarii to the pattern of the members of the officium who performed specialized functions; characteristically it is based on evidence from a single region, province, or locale. Always, it fails.

The failure of scholars to achieve consensus on beneficiarial function does not mean that beneficiarial function cannot be understood. It does mean that it cannot be understood by approaching it in the traditional way, using individual pieces of evidence, or patterns in the evidence, to isolate some particular duty or ensemble of duties as the primary activity of beneficiarii. A reappraisal of the evidence indicates that beneficiarial function was never closely defined in the first place. It varied from region to region, place to place, perhaps even from day to day. The ambiguity of the evidence the beneficiarii left behind in large measure reflects the ambiguity of their function. In the face of this ambiguity, the task of understanding this function can best be approached by establishing broad categories of beneficiarial activity, then illustrating the types of duties that beneficiarii consularis performed within those categories by citing specific evidence when available.

Because beneficiarii consularis served the governors, their activities reflected the broad categories of gubernational activity. The category within which most gubernatorial and beneficiarial activity fell is administration. Within this sphere, beneficiarii performed a wide variety of specific duties. They carried messages, worked as clerks, dealt with provincials, acted as liaison with other elements of the administration, and supervised activity on provincial roads.

The use of beneficiarii as couriers exemplifies their activity as gubernatorial orderlies, since message carrying is a duty that orderlies have performed throughout history for the officers they serve. The evidence for this activity is literary. The vita Hadriani in the Historia Augusta records the dispatch of a beneficiarius by L. Julius Ursus Servianus, governor of Germania inferior, to bear the news of Nerva's death to Trajan.⁹ Controversy swarms around the Historia Augusta, but nothing in this incident hints of the romantic invention that clouds the reliability of other parts of the work. The piece is early, but the governors need for couriers would not change across time, nor would it have varied significantly from one region of the empire to another. There is little doubt that message-bearing was a routine duty of beneficiarii, but since it was performed at need, rather than continuously, it was not the sort of activity that we would expect to be commemorated on inscriptions.

The evidence for beneficiarial service as clerks is iconographic. A Severan funeral monument from Nikopolis in Egypt depicts the departed beneficiarius Gavidius Damianus holding a scroll and a stylus;¹⁰ the monument of Q. Aemilius Rufus from Salona in Dalmatia includes among its decorative elements a writing- case, together with a closed tablet and stylus-box.¹¹ A primary beneficiarial role in economic control has been inferred from these decorations,¹² but the items depicted have no necessary connection with economic activity. They are the tools of a clerk, and gubernatorial beneficiarii, especially in Dalmatia, would not have controlled activity that lay within the preserve of the imperial procurators. The writing tools indicate nothing more than engagement in the chores characteristic of routine clerical activity. The fact that these tools were included on the men's funeral monuments shows that, in their case at least, those chores constituted their primary duty. The fact that this evidence comes from provincial capitals in widely separated parts of the empire indicates that beneficiarial performance of clerical duties for governors was not uncommon.

Beneficiarial dealings with provincials assumed a variety of forms, attested by a variety of evidence. Beneficiarii served as channels of communication: in Egypt, papyri document them serving as local agents of the governor, forwarding the complaints and petitions of the provincials to the prefect.¹³ Tertullian records beneficiarii harrassing gamblers.in the towns of early third-century north Africa. ¹⁴ Beneficiarii might raise militias or organize local defense in times of threat: such activity has been detected in two inscriptions from Samum in Dacia dating to the reign of Gordian III, which record men who describe themselves as beneficiarii consularis agens Samo cum regione Ansamensium sub signo.¹⁵ Generally, however, the nature of beneficiarial involvement with provincials was more ambiguous. Beneficiarii were present in a number of towns in the Danube region, for quantities of their votive altars are recorded in many towns.¹⁶ The suggestion has been made that among other duties there, one of their responsibilities was to maintain facilities for the gubernatorial conventus system, but this necessarily rests on inference.¹⁷ A more direct role in the life of the towns has been proposed by Miroslava Mirkovic, on the basis of a funerary text from Tarraco in Hispania citerior dedicated to a b(ene)f(iciario) co(n)s(ularis) municipi,¹⁸ but this is a misreading. The dedication of the text reflects not a beneficiarial involvement in local affairs but rather the fact that the dead man was a fellow-citizen (municeps) from the home town of the man who dedicated the text.¹⁹

Governors also used beneficiarii consularis to maintain a presence around the operations of other elements of the imperial administration within their provinces. This was particularly the case in the Danube region, where beneficiarii consularis are routinely found in the vicinity of imperial mines, which were supervised by imperial procurators who lay outside the governors' administrative authority.²⁰ In Dalmatia, beneficiarii consularis are known from mining areas of Skelani²¹ and Domavia.²² In Dacia, they appear at the gold mines of Ampelum.²³ In Moesia Superior, numbers of beneficiarii consularis occur around the gold mines in the southwestern area of the province.²⁴ In Moesia Inferior, a concentration of altars occurs at the mining center of Montana.²⁵ Each of these regions was the seat of a procurator who administered the mines, and it has been suggested that two major reasons for the beneficiarial presence were to represent the governors' interests and to buffer friction between the procurators and the troops stationed in the area to maintain security;²⁶ it has also been suggested that beneficiarii stationed in the vicinity of mining zones in Noricum had the task of preventing the smuggling of precious metals.²⁷

Besides mining, beneficiarii consularis in the Danube area, and particularly in the Pannonias, were associated with the customs. A number of scholars have maintained that these beneficiarii actually controlled the customs, but the evidence does not support this.²⁸ Instead of controlling the customs, the beneficiarial role seems to have been to cooperate with the officials who did. This explains the presence of beneficiarii consularis in the same places as major customs posts — in the important towns of Poetovio, Aquincum, Siscia, and Sirmium — as well as at minor locations like Atrans in Noricum and Alta Pipa in Germania superior.²⁹ Something of the specific nature of the cooperation between these agents of the governor and the officials of the customs can be seen in papyri from Egypt, which show beneficiarii dealing with customs violators,³⁰ and therefore indicates that their responsibility in the European provinces was to provide law enforcement for the stationes and especially to apprehend smugglers.

Besides administrative or military interaction with the provincials and liaison with other elements of the administration, beneficiarii consularis were used by the governors to oversee traffic along provincial roads. A. von Domaszewski defined this as the chief role of beneficiarii prior to 190, based on his study of the associations between beneficiarial altars and the imperial highway system,³¹ and since his study, this has become one of the dominant models in the effort to define a primary beneficiarial function. Domaszewski's study focused on the roads of three areas — the Danube frontier (including Dalmatia), the Rhine, and Britain — and while the associations he mapped out are accurate, they require qualification on two important scores. First, they apply only to those three parts of the empire, offering a graphic demonstration of the regionalism of the beneficiarii. In the interior European provinces, beneficiarial evidence varies between sparse and non-existent, and where it appears, it is almost always funerary and therefore offers weak proof for any active beneficiarial role in the area concerned. Even in the provinces of north Africa, the altar evidence is lacking to suggest a meaningful beneficiarial presence along the roads.³² Second, within Domaszewski's three regions, the distribution of the evidence varies profoundly from one region to another. Along the Danube and in Dalmatia, beneficiarii consularis are found widely along roads throughout the interior, but are rare along the frontier itself. In Britain and the Germanies, on the other hand, they are strongly concentrated along the frontier in the military zone and its immediate hinterland. Very few of their inscriptions are known from interior locations, far too few to demonstrate a strong beneficiarial presence along the majority of the regional highway net.³³ Their presence along that net, therefore, was largely limited to the provinces of the Danube frontier and Dalmatia.

The nature of beneficiarial traffic supervision was a point that von Domaszewski left undefined, but various scholars have suggested that a primary area of concern lay in the cursus publicus. This is a sensible suggestion. After the public post came under more direct imperial control in the early second century, the governors had an obvious interest in monitoring the use of its facilities, and, as the post came to be more heavily used during the third century, for transport of the annona and even for troops movements, the burden on the governors would have increased with the need to become more closely involved in insuring that the increased traffic passing through their jurisdictions did so as smoothly as possible. Giving beneficiarii the task of overseeing the main routes of the cursus publicus, with an eye to keeping up its facilities and buffering friction that might arise between transiting vehicles or troops and the provincials who lived nearby, represents a logical extension of the role for which governors employed beneficiarii in mining areas.

Unfortunately, the effort to document beneficiarial involvement in the cursus publicus with particular texts has proven to be a failure, producing only variant interpretations and ongoing controversy, symbolizing the failure of the search for a general functional consensus. Two key pieces of evidence for beneficiarial involvement in the cursus publicus exemplify this situation. The first is an altar from Aquincum dedicated by two beneficiarii consularis who describe themselves as agentes curam leg et colonia Aq(uincensi).³⁴ Basing their argument on late imperial analogues, Otto Hirschfeld and H.-G. Pflaum interpreted the text as proving that early third-century beneficiarii acted as highway patrolmen within the cursus publicus.³⁵ Miroslava Mirkovic, on the other hand, interpreted it to indicate a role not in the cursus publicus, but rather in the colony of Aquincum.³⁶ She also expanded the text to read agentes curam leg(ionis), but Egon Schallmayer expanded it agentes curam leg(ione) and saw no implication of administrative involvement or activity.³⁷ The second piece of evidence is an inscription from Mainz in Germania superior, dedicated to the genius catabuli consularis, which Mirkovic did cite as evidence for beneficiarial involvement in the cursus publicus.³⁸ Her interpretation of the text conflicts directly with that of its original editor, however, who specifically excluded any association between the stables mentioned in the dedication and the cursus publicus.³⁹ The problems associated with these texts do not bar a secondary beneficiarial role in the operations of the cursus publicus, but they do emphasize the difficulties inherent in basing functional hypotheses on particular epigraphic texts. The soundest evidence remains the simple geographical relationship between beneficiarial evidence, roads, and towns, documented by von Domaszewski.

A key role has also been suggested for beneficiarii consularis in the collection of grain supplies for the army, organized in the early third century as the annona. Given the role of the governors as military commanders, and the use of the cursus publicus to forward these supplies, this is reasonable. Papyri demonstrate beneficiarial activity in this capacity in Egypt, and particularly in guarding the shipments on their way to storehouses.⁴⁰ Sources from other parts of the empire, however, are more ambiguous. Pliny's letters from Bithynia are usually cited as evidence,⁴¹ but on close inspection prove open to doubt. A freedman procurator, Maximus, asked Pliny for six soldiers in addition to those already in his service; Pliny refused, but since Maximus was setting out to collect grain in Paphlagonia, Pliny did give him two cavalry troopers (equities) for protection (tutelae causa). In fact, Pliny does not label either the six men Maximus requested or those already in Maximus' service as beneficiarii; instead, he simply calls those men soldiers (milites). The only men whom Pliny distinguishes as beneficiarii are those assigned to the procurator Virdius Gemellinus,⁴² an equestrian, and those assigned to Gavius Bassus, praefectus orae Ponticae.⁴³ Furthermore, it is unclear what the duties of Maximus' soldiers might have been, although they seem not to have included security, since Pliny provided him with cavalrymen for that express purpose.

Locational evidence has also been used to infer a beneficiarial role in the annona. Inscriptions of beneficiarii are sometimes found in the vicinity of the suspected locations of villae where the annona was collected or stored in the third century.⁴⁴ But it is important not to rest too much on these relationships, for the locations of these villae or the centers that administered them are often conjectural. A case in point is Mursa in Pannonia inferior, which is argued to have been an administrative center for villas involved in the annona, which in turn has been used to explain the presence of altars erected by beneficiarii consularis from legio IV Flavia in neighboring Moesia superior.⁴⁵ But Mursa was an important town in its own right, a Hadrianic colonia, and as we have just seen, there are many reasons, other than the annona, why the governor of Pannonia inferior might have stationed beneficiarii in a town of Mursa's prominence.

Besides administration, the other broad area of gubernatorial activity in which beneficiarii were employed was internal security. Internal security takes in a range of activities from the arrest and guarding prisoners to the suppression of banditry in rural areas, and it overlaps with activities we have already examined in the administrative sphere like the provision of police services around facilities of the customs, the cursus publicus, and the annona. Over the last century, the security role has attracted considerable support as the primary area of beneficiarial responsibility. On careful examination, however, it becomes clear that beneficiarial internal security activities find only -weak support in the evidence, whether textual or locational, and therefore that the extent to which beneficiarii were involved in internal security must actually have been limited. Security, in other words, was a far less important beneficiarial activity than administration.

One piece of evidence for the security role seems to offer a vignette of beneficiarii engaged in the routine police chore of apprehending malefactors to stand trail before the governor. A squad of six beneficiarii arrested Fructuosus, bishop of Tarraco, in 259 to bring him to trial before the governor of Hispania Tarraconensis.⁴⁶ There is every likelihood that beneficiarii were actually used for such work, especially in provincial capitals like Tarraco, and the account is circumstantial in tone, but the fact that its current recession dates to the late fourth century leaves open the possibility that the beneficiarial role in the incident reflects late imperial practice rather than. that of the third century.⁴⁷ On a related theme, Mirkovic has claimed that beneficiarii consularis oversaw prisons, basing her assertion on an inscription from Aquincum which she expanded to indicate that the beneficiarii who set it up was. agens c(uram) c(arceris?).⁴⁸ This is also not an unreasonable role for beneficiarii in the provincial capital, but on the one hand the expansion is not certain, as she admits,⁴⁹ and on the other, a glance at the text clearly indicates that the beneficiarius who erected the text worked not for the governor but rather on the staff of legio II adiutrix.⁵⁰

It is doubtful whether beneficiarii consularis played any significant role in the suppression of unrest, despite the fact that this role has been asserted as the primary beneficiarial function by scholars, such as Hirschfeld,⁵¹ von Domaszewski,⁵² MacMullen,⁵³ and Robert.⁵⁴ As Schallmayer was first to observe,⁵⁵ data derived from the altars clearly show that manning levels at beneficiarial posts were far too low to indicate the involvement of beneficiarii in putting down unrest. The general absence from sites of dedications by more than one man, and the particular absence of such evidence at well documented and dated sites such as Celeia in Noricum, Neviodunum in Pannonia superior, Sirmium in Pannonia inferior, and Osterburken in Germania superior, shows that normally only one beneficiarius was assigned to each post.⁵⁶ Occasionally, two men appear, as on one or two stones at Savaria and Siscia in Pannonia superior,⁵⁷ and at Sirmium temporarily after 221,⁵⁸ but even at Sirmium, the most important Roman center in the Danube region, manning levels never exceeded four, and touched that level only briefly, under Alexander Severus.⁵⁹ Furthermore, no evidence points to any detachments of troops being assigned to beneficiarii to assist them. Low manning levels also invalidate the suggestion that beneficiarii were employed to overawe a rural population resentful of the annona.⁶⁰ A lone beneficiarius, or even a pair of beneficiarii, would have been of little account in the face of bands of brigands or mobs of angry peasants.

Besides low manning levels, terms of beneficiarial assignment seem too have been too brief for an effective anti-brigandage role. Schallmayer suggested six months to a year for the beneficiarii at Osterburken,⁶¹ a figure which Rankov also proposed for Montana.⁶² Mirkovic concluded that assignments at Sirmium were not fixed in duration, although she cited figures that range from one to four years.⁶³ At Celeia, the most closely dated sequence of altars suggests two-year terms under Caracalla.⁶⁴ Terms of six months to a year are far too short to enable beneficiarii to acquaint themselves with the countryside where brigands operated or the rural population among whom brigands circulated; such short terms would not have sufficed to enable beneficiarii to develop a useful network of informants within an urban setting. Two years probably represents a minimum term for the effective performance of any of these tasks, but only the sorts of terms at the outside limits of the ranges of Sirmium would have enabled the men to acquire the knowledge and develop the local support necessary to counter rural or urban unrest effectively, and terms of those lengths are unique to Sirmium.

Low manning levels and terms of assignment of six months to two years would have not barred beneficiarii consularis from gathering intelligence as they performed their manifold other duties in the towns, the countryside, and the roads where they were stationed. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine gubernatorial beneficiarii not passing on to their superiors any valuable information which might come their way. As natural as it is to infer this activity, however, the only evidence for it derives from the distribution of beneficiarial texts and the prior service of several beneficiarii consularis as frumentarii.⁶⁵ The geographical distribution of texts, and evidence that beneficiarii had previously served as frumentarii, however, do not make intelligence-gathering into a principal function of the beneficiarii consularis, in light of the wide array of activities which beneficiarii are likely to have performed at their duty stations in the empire's towns and along its roads. Furthermore, frumentarii were promoted not only to posts as beneficiarii consularis, but also to those of commentariensis and cornicularius tribuni,⁶⁶ which means that their promotion into the beneficiariate need not have involved an express continuation of their intelligence activity, nor anything more sinister than an upward career move within the imperial service.

It appears, then, that security activities played at best an incidental role in the duties of beneficiarii consularis. For the most part, those activities consisted of the routine duties of apprehending people for trial, passing on information on activity of interest to the governor, and, as we have seen in the discussion of administrative activity, providing enforcement assistance for officials of the customs. It must be borne in mind, as well, that the evidence demonstrates that beneficiarii consularis performed even these modest duties only in limited areas of the empire, and that elsewhere, if they were performed at all, they were performed by other officials.

It is clear from this discussion that in contrast to their specialist colleagues on the gubernatorial officium, beneficiarii were generalists, employed in a variety of tasks. None of these tasks clearly predominated over the others, except locally and temporarily. The best that can be done to characterize those tasks is to say that they were for the most part broadly administrative in character, with a minor role in internal security. In their breadth and ambiguity, the activities of the beneficiarii reflect the activities of the governors to whom they were assigned. It is also important to note the fact that, despite their being distributed from Egypt to Britain, and whatever functions they performed, beneficiarii were not present in all provinces. They were only a common feature of Roman administrative landscape along the garrisoned periphery, and Were largely unknown in the ungarrisoned interior provinces.

At the outset, it was suggested that determining beneficiarial function would cast light on two issues: the involvement of the imperial government in the lives of the provincials; and the government's management of its own internal resources. In demonstrating the diversity of the beneficiarial role in Roman administration, both in terms of functional and in its variability from region to region, it has become clear that the beneficiarii consularis, despite being the most widely deployed and widely attested of all gubernatorial officiales, were not an extensive presence in the life of the provinces. Deployed singly to posts confined to certain areas of certain provinces in certain regions of the empire, performing a variety of duties, many of which had to do with imperial affairs rather than local ones, the beneficiarii indicate that, away from provincial capitals at least, the imperial administrative presence was modest at best.

So far as the government's management of its own internal resources is concerned, this review has shown two important points. The first is that the beneficiarii consularis provided a high degree of flexibility to governors in dealing with the very diverse challenges that confronted them in administering their provinces. As a more specialized officium emerged from the late second century on, perhaps governors came to appreciate the utility of their beneficiarii more than ever, and used them more extensively than ever. This may help to account for the explosion in evidence for beneficiarii after 190, an explosion that von Domaszewski attributed to a beneficiarial assignment to security duties.⁶⁷ But the beneficiarii consularis say something else about the administration of the provinces. That administration was not uniform. There were no beneficiarii in many provinces, despite the fact that those provinces had roads, towns, mines, and bishops, just like the garrisoned provinces in which beneficiarii were active. The government seemingly made no effort to impose a uniform scheme of provincial administration, leaving governors to see to their own administrative needs according.to their own administrative resources. That, in turn, suggests that the notion that their was a 'system' of Roman provincial administration may stand in need of radical revision.

Bibliography

Alföldy, G., Noricum (London, 1974).

Van Berchem, E., L'annone militaire dans l'Empire romain au IIIe siècle (Paris, 1938).

Breeze, D. J., 'The organisation of the career structure of the immunes and principales of the Roman army', Bonner Jahrbücher 174 (1974), 245-292.

Dise, R., Cultural Change and Imperial Administration (Zurich, 1991).

Herz, P., 'Neue Benefiziarier-Altäre aus Mainz', Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 22 (1976), 191-199.

Holmberg, E., Zur Geschichte des Cursus Publicus (Uppsala, 1993).

von Domaszewski, A., 'Die Beneficiarierposten und die römischen Strassennetze', Westdeutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst, vol. 21 (1902), 158-211.

Hirschfeld, O., 'Die Sicherheitspolizei im römischen Kaiserreich', Sitzungsberichte der königlichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin (1891), 845-877.

MacMullen, R., Soldier and Civilian in the Later Roman Empire (Harvard, 1963).

-------, Enemies of the Roman Order (Harvard, 1966).

Mirkovic, M., 'Beneficiarii Consularis and the new Outpost in Sirmium', Roman Frontier Studies 1989 (Exeter, 1990), 252-256.

Orsted, P., Roman Imperial Economy and Romanization (Copenhagen, 1985).

Pflaum, H.-G., Essai sur le cursus publicus sous le Haut-Empire romain (Paris, 1940).

Popovic, V., 'Une station de bénéficiares à Sirmium', Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Jan-Mar 1989, 116-123.

Rankov, N. B., 'A Contribution to the Military and Administrative History of Montana', Ancient Bulgaria (Nottingham, 1983), 40-73.

Robert, L., 'Une Épitaphe d'Olympos', Hellenica (1975), 172-177.

Saxer, V., 'Fructuosus of Tarragona,' Encyclopedia of the Early Church (Oxford, 1992) 331.

Schallmayer, E., 'Zur Herkunft und Funktion der Beneficiarier', Roman Frontier Studies 1989 (Exeter, 1991), 400-406.

------, et al., Der römische Weihebezirk von Osterburken I, Corpus der griechischen und lateinischen Beneficiarier-Inschriften des Römischen Reiches (Stuttgart, 1990).

Winkler, G., Die Reichsbeamten von Noricum und ihr Personal (Vienna, 1969).

Abbreviations

Van Berchem: E. van Berchem, L'annone militaire dans l'Empire romain au IIIe siècle (Paris, 1938).

Domaszewski: A. von Domaszewski, 'Die Beneficiarierposten und die römischen Strassenetze', Westdeutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst, vol. 21 (1902), 158-211.

CBFIR: E. Schallmayer et al., Der römische Weihebezirk von Osterburken I, Corpus der griechischen und lateinischen Beneficiarier- Inschriften des Römischen Reiches (Stuttgart, 1990).

Herz: P. Herz, 'Neue Benefiziarier-Altäre aus Mainz', Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 22 (1976), 191-199.

Hirschfeld: O. Hirschfeld, 'Die Sicherheitspolizei im römischen Kaiserreich', Sitzungsberichte der königlichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin (1891), 845-877.

MacMullen 1963: R. MacMullen, Soldier and Civilian in the Later Roman Empire (Harvard, 1963).

MacMullen 1966: R. MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order (Harvard, 1966).

Mirkovic: M. Mirkovic, 'Beneficiarii Consularis and the new Outpost in Sirmium', Roman Frontier Studies 1989 (Exeter, 1990) 252-256.

Orsted: P. Orsted, Roman Imperial Economy and Romanization (Copenhagen, 1985).

Rankov: N. B. Rankov, 'A Contribution to the Military and Administrative History of Montana,' Ancient Bulgaria (Nottingham, 1983), 40-73.

Robert: L. Robert, 'Une Épitaphe d'Olympos', Hellenica (1975), 172-177.

Schallmayer RFS 1989: E. Schallmayer, 'Zur Herkunft und Funktion der Beneficiarier', Roman Frontier Studies 1989 (Exeter, 1990), 400-406.

Winkler, Reichsbeamten: G. Winkler, Die Reichsbeamten von Noricum und ihr Personal (Vienna, 1969).

Footnotes

1 Ep. x. 21. 17.

2 De fuga in persecutione 13.

3 acta Fructuosi 1.

4 Hist. Aug., Hadr. ii. 6.

5 V. Saxer, 'Fructuosus of Tarragona', Encyclopedia of the Early Church (Oxford, 1992), 331.

6 For example, CIL 13.6127 = CBFIR 96, CBFIR 169, CIL 3.825 = CBFIR 533, AE 1957.329 = CBFIR 532, CIL 8.17634 = 10723 = CBFIR 752. The term has the overlapping sense of 'appointment'.

7 Most recently at Sirmium in Pannonia Inferior: M. Mirkovic, 'Beneficiarii Consularis and the new Outpost in Sirmium', Roman Frontier Studies 1989 (Exeter, 1990), 252-256; V Popovic, 'Une station de bénéficiares à Sirmium', Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Jan- Mar 1989, 116-123.

8 Celeia, in Noricum, has twenty-three altars of beneficiarii, but only one funerary text. Since it was an important municipium, in which legionaries were actively recruited, that funerary text was probably of a beneficiarius from the town. No funerary texts accompany the nineteen beneficiarial altars at Neviodunum/Praetorium Latobicorum in Pannonia superior.

9 Hist. Aug., Hadr. ii. 6.

10 CIL 3. 6601 = CBFIR 734, with illustration; Schallmayer, RFS (1989), 405.

11 CIL 3. 12895 = CBFIR 476, with illustration; Schmallmayer, RFS (1989), 405.

12 Schallmayer, RFS (1989), 405.

13 Mirkovic, 256.

14 De fuga in persecutione 13.

15 CBFIR 525, AE 1957. 326 = CBFIR 53 1. Rankov, 52.

16 Texts of beneficiarii consularis appear frequently in towns in Noricum, the Pannonias, Dalmatia, and Dacia. Noricum: Virunum, Iuvavum, Celeia; Pannonia superior: Carnuntum, Savaria, Siscia, Poetovio, Mursella, Neviodunum; Pannonia inferior: Aquincum, Brigetio, Sopianae, Mursa, Sirmium; Dalmatia: Magnum, Burnum, Municipium S.... Doclea, Novae, Narona, Tilurium; Dacia: Apulum, Samum, Napoca, Potaissa, Ampelium.

17 R. Dise, Cultural Change and Imperial Administration (Zurich, 1991), 115-116.

18 CIL 3. 4145 = CBFIR 851. Mirkovic, 255.

19 Both came from north Africa (Schallmayer, CBFIR 851, p. 652). A fragmentary text with a similar dedication is known from Caesarea in Mauretania Caesariensis: CIL 8. 21056 = CBFIR 822.

20 Rankov, 51. See his n. 61 for a full discussion of the issue.

21 CBFIR 471, 472, CIL 3.14219(1) = CBFIR 473, CIL 3. 14219(5) = CBFIR 474, CBFIR 475.

22 CIL 3. 12723 = CBFIR 470.

23 CIL 3.7833 = CBFIR 565, CIL 3. 1295 = CBFIR 566, CBFIR 567.

24 CBFIR 595, AE 1952. 193 = CBFIR 602, CBFIR 605, CBFIR 606, CBFIR 607, CBFIR 608, CBFIR 610.

25 CIL 3. 7449 = CBFIR 643, CIL 3. 7447 = CBFIR 644, CBFIR 646, CBFIR 647. Rankov presents a microscopic analysis of these mines and their administration.

26 Rankov, 49-51.

27 Orsted, 210.

28 This is what is done by Schallmayer, Roman Frontier Studies (1989), 405, Mirkovic 255, and Rankov 48. See Orsted, 303 ff. for a meticulous discussion of the organization of the Illyrican customs.

29 Atrans: CIL 3. 116776 = Winkler, Reichsbeamten 129, no. 24 — CBFIR 266. Alta Ripa: CIL 13. 6127 = CBFIR 96, CBFIR 97.

30 P. Amb. 77, cited in Mirkovic, 255-256.

31 Domaszewski, 210-211.

32 The only altar from Africa proconsularis comes from Hippo Regius: AE 1961. 224 = CBFIR 743. The locations of altars in Numidia (other than Lambaesis) are Vazaivi (seven texts): CIL 8. 17634 = 10723 = CBFIR 752, CIL 8.17626 = 10718 = CBFIR 753, CIL 8. 17623 CBFIR 754, CIL 8. 17619 = CBFIR 758; Cuicul (one): CBFIR 759; Lamsorti (one): CIL 8. 4436 18595 = CBFIR 760. Mauretania Caesariensis: Satafis (one); CIL 8. 20251 = CBFIR 821; El Gahra (one): CIL 8. 18025 = CBFIR 824.

33 British beneficiarii dot the road from Eboracum to Hadrian's Wall: Cataractonium: CIL 7. 271 RIB 725 = CBFIR 7; Vinovia: CIL 7.424 = RIB 1031 = CBFIR 2, RIB 1030 = CBFIR 3; Brocavum: RIB 783 = CBFIR 5. Elsewhere, they are rare: Venta Beigarum: CIL 7. 5 = RIB 88 = CBFIR 20; Dorchester: CIL 7. 83 = RIB 235 = CBFIR 12; Lancaster: CIL 7. 286 = RIB 602 = CBFIR 16. In Germania superior, the only beneficiarial altars in the interior of the province are found at Alta Ripa: CIL 13. 6127 = CBFI R 96, CBFIR 97; Vicus Iulius: CIL 13. 6095 = CBFIR 105; Augusta Rauricorum: CBFIR 99; Pontailler-sur-Saône: CIL 13.5609 = CBFIR 176.

34 CIL 3. 10429 = CBFIR 379. Hirschfeld, 862-3.

35 Hirschfeld, 862-3; H.-G. Pflaum, Essai sur le cursus publicus sous le Haut-Empire romain (Paris, 1940), 147.

36 Mirkovic, 256.

37 CBFIR, 308.

38 Mirkovic, 255. The text is AE (1976) 502 = AE (1979) 423 = CBFIR 130.

39 Herz, 193.

40 MacMullen (1963), 56 n. 20 collects the references to this activity.

41 Ep. x. 27, 28. Mirkovic, 255.

42 Ep. x. 27.

43 Ep. x. 21.

44 Van Berchem, 182.

45 Mirkovic, 255.

46 acta Fructuosi 1.

47 V. Saxer, 'Fructuosus of Tarragona,', Encyclopedia of the Early Church (Oxford, 1992), 331.

48 Mirkovic, 256. CIL 3. 3412 = CBFIR 426.

49 Mirkovic, 256 n. 16.

50 bg. bg. leg II ad. p.f. S.

51 Hirschfeld, 862-3.

52 Domaszewski, 210-211.

53 MacMullen (1963), 56 n. 20; MacMullen (1966) 260 f. 54 Robert, 175.

54 Robert, 175.

55 Schallmayer, RFS (1989), 403-5.

56 Schallmayer, RFS (1989), 403-5; Mirkovic, 254.

57 Savaria: AE (1947) 30 = CBFIR 330; Siscia: CIL 3. 15181(1) = CBFIR 311.

58 Mirkovic, 254.

59 Mirkovic, 254.

60 Van Berchem, 182.

61 Schallmayer, RFS (1989), 403.

62 Rankov, 48.

63 Mirkovic, 254.

64 CIL 3. 5187 = CBFIR 228 (AD 21 1); CIL 3.5154 = CBFIR 218 (AD 213); CIL 3. 5185 = CBFIR 227 (AD 215); CIL 3. 5189 = CBFIR 230 (AD 217).

65 G. Alföldy, Noricum (London, 1974), 162; Mirkovic, 256. CIL 2. 4154 = ILS 2369 = CBFIR 841 (Hispania Tarraconensis); CBFIR 607 (Moesia superior); CIL 8. 17627 = CBFIR 756 (Numidia). D.J. Breem, 'The organisation of the career structure of the immunes and principales of the Roman army', Bonner Jahrbücher 174 (1974), 266.

66 CIL 13. 1771; CIL 13. 8282.

67 Domaszewski, 210-211.