ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

priesthoods would, and smaller issues of drafting of vows, the procedure for consecratingbuildings, and control of the calendar, once instituted, fell to them. 90An inscription from Sora, dating just after the foundation of the colony of 44BCE, raises another possibility. 91The text of the inscription reads:L(ucio) Firmio L(uci) f(ilio) /prim(o) pil(o) tr(ibuno) mil(itum) /IHIvir(o)i(ure) d(icundo) / colonia deducta /prim(o) pontifici / legio IIII Sorana /honoris et virtutuis caus{s}a. (CIL X 5713 = ILLRP 498a)The fourth Soran legion [set up this monument ] to Lucius Firmius, son ofLucius, first file tribune of the soldiers, quattuorvir for giving laws in thecolony led out, first pontiff, for the sake of honor and virtue. (Trans.Coles)The prim(o) pontifici is significant because either Sora had no pontifices during its timeas Latin colony and municipium or the priests of the new colony supplanted those of theold town as though they never existed. The third option is that Lucius Firmius joined thepriests of the colony, in which case his honor would have been to be the first new priestof the new colony. I suspect that this inscription, when combined with the stipulations ofthe Urso Charter, indicates that Lucius Firmius joined the colleges of priests already inSora. Nonetheless, given the ad hoc nature of mid-Republican colonization efforts, wecannot dismiss the possibility that a colony may not have begun its civic existence withpriests in the Roman form, namely pontifices and augurs.The above hypothetical reconstruction of the tasks the commissioners might haveundertaken if they had complete control over the space, calendar, laws, and authority ofthe colony runs into a few problems. The spatial aspects are the least problematic, as theyrequire the commissioners to assume the duties of a number of magistracies, many of90 Beard, North, and Price (1998), p. 30.91 See Mezzazzappa (2003), p. 100 and n. 10 for discussion of the historical context of this inscription.125