1 Earliest Rome

I58380; C7c.vi.2120
8.3 The administrative business of the priestly colleges
8.3 The priestly colleges
It is generally very hard to reconstruct any detailed picture of how exactly the
priests carried out their ritual duties or conducted their administrative business;
but records inscribed on stone occasionally give us a glimpse of day-today
priestly activity. This text is concerned with the responsibilities of the
pontifical college for the rules and regulations of burial at Rome (see also
10.4d(iii) and (iv)). It records a decision taken by two pontifices (by correspondence,
without actually meeting) allowing one Arrius Alphius to transfer the
bodies of his wife and son to a new tomb. The inscription was presumably put
up by Arrius AJphius to show that he had formal permission to make the move.
For detailed records or the titual performed by a group or priests, see 4.5;
5.7b; 6.2.
See further: Vol. 1, 25-6, 320-1; Crook (1967) 133-8 (on burial law);
Porte (1989) 131-44.
From Velius Fidus to his colleague lubentius Celsus, greetings:
My dear brother 1
Desiderius, 2
1 have sent you a letter of Arrius Alphius, an ex-slave of
Arria Fadilla, the mother of our lord, the emperor Antoninus , and a man whom I
have known for a long time, since my youth. In fact I was amazed that, when I was away
from home, this man tracked me down to where I was and told me that he had urgently
petitioned our lord the emperor for what he wanted - both for the sake of his peace of
mind and because of the religious issues involved. 3
So then, to make sure that we do not
appear to have been responsible for any delay, please send the letter straight back to me,
properly endorsed, with the same slave who has brought h to you." I hope you are well
and on good form.
Copy of the letter given:
The circumstances are that I lost my wife and son some time ago and, because I had very
little money, I buried them in a clay coffin-until such time as the tomb was built in the
place I had bought on the Flaminian Road, between the second and third milestones as you
go out of the city on the left hand side of the road, in the tomb under the custodianship of
FlaviaThumele, in the burial ground belonging to Marcus Silius Orcilius. 3
Therefore I beg
you, my lord, to allow me to put their bodies in that same place in a marble sarcophagus
that I have just bought, so that when I die 1 can be laid there next to them.
Agreed; decision taken. I, lubentius Celsus, deputy master/' have endorsed this, 3 days
before the Nones of November , in the consulship of Antius Polio and
Opimianus, following the regular consulship of Scverus and Sabinianus . 7
1. Used as a tide of address between priests in the same college.
2. Another name of lubentius Cekus.
3- It seems that Arrius Alphius first approached the emperor (who was head of the
pontifical college — see 8.5b), and then tracked down Velius Fidus.
201