1 Earliest Rome

1 0 . R O M E O U T S I D E R O M E
master of the College, on the 16th day before the Kalends of September in
the consulship of Marcus Umbrius Primus and Titus Flavius Coelianus :''
}. Magistrates of Cumae.
2. She is called 'Mother Goddess of Baiae' in the Cumaean document; Mother of the Gods,
that is Magna Mater, in the reply of the quinderimviri, who presumably recognized, but
did not themselves use, the local name.
3. For these decorations, see also 6.7b.
4. These two were consuls elected for the second part of the same calendar year as the first
pair mentioned.
10.4c Religious law in the provinces (second century A.D.)
Gaius, Institutes II. 1-11
The Roman jurist Gaius, in discussing the definition of the 'sacred' and the
'religious' draws a clear disrinction between Roman and provincial territory.
See furrher: Vol. 1, 320-1; Fugier (1963) 131; Watson (1992) 55-7*.
The first division of things is into two classes; for some are subject to divine law ,
some to human law. Within divine law some things are sacred, some religious. Things
sacred are those consecrated to the gods above; things religious are those devoted to the
gods below. Nothing can become sacred except by the authority of the Roman People,
which can result either through the passing of a law or through a decree of the senate. On
the other hand, things can become religious by our own act of will when we bury the
dead in our own ground, provided that the particular burial is our own business. On the
soil of the provinces, however, since individuals can only have possession or usufruct but
not full dominion, 1
which belongs only to the people of Rome or to the emperor, the
ground can never become properly religious but only quasi-religious. In the same way in
the provinces, ground that has not been consecrated by authority of the Roman People is
not properly sacred but quasi-sacred.
250
1. Individuals in the provinces can never have full dominion, only qualified forms of own­
ership; it follows that by burying their dead they cannot make the ground 'religious'.
10.4d Pliny and Trajan on points of religious law
Pliny the Younger was sent to Pontus-Bithynia (modern norrh-west Turkey) as
Governor probably in A.D. 110; his correspondence with the Emperor Trajan
from the years of his governorship is preserved among his published Letters.
These two exchanges of letters concern points of religious law as they affected
the lives of provincials. In broad terms, they support Gaius' views in 10.4c;
though Trajan's assumption in 10.4d(iv) seems to be that, on the one hand, the
pontifical law could in theory be applicable, while, on rhe other, it would be
'hard' on the provincials to apply it in actual cases.