The lex coloniae Genetivae Iuliae seu Ursonensis is the founding statute of Caesar's colony at Urso (Osuna, Spain), drafted in 44 BC and inscribed on bronze under the Flavians. 49 chapters survive, from LXI to CXXXIV with gaps. Latin text and English translation follow M. H. Crawford and collaborators, Roman Statutes I (1996), no. 25; underlining of damaged letters in the source is not reproduced — see About for what this reader does and does not preserve.
Chapter LXII is the earliest surviving establishment table for a Roman town: it legislates, man by man and sesterce by sesterce, the staff each magistrate may keep. Chapter LXIII adds pro-rata pay for the first, partial year. All figures below are transcribed from the chapter text on the left tab — nothing is added.
| Post | Latin | Per duumvir | Salary, HS p.a. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scribe | scriba | 2 | 1,200 |
| Attendant | accensus | 1 | 700 |
| Lictor | lictor | 2 | 600 |
| Haruspex | haruspex | 1 | 500 |
| Messenger | viator | 2 | 400 |
| Clerk | librarius | 1 | 300 |
| Herald | praeco | 1 | 300 |
| Flutist | tibicen | 1 | 300 |
| Post | Latin | Per aedile | Salary, HS p.a. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scribe | scriba | 1 | 800 |
| Public slave, girt with the limus | publicus cum cincto limo | 4 | — |
| Haruspex | haruspex | 1 | 100 |
| Flutist | tibicen | 1 | 300 |
| Herald | praeco | 1 | 300 |
The four public slaves are servile and unsalaried in the chapter; the aedilician flute-player's and herald's 300 HS stand in the clause completed across the tablet break ("…300 sesterces each, to heralds 300 sesterces each"). All attendants are exempt from the military levy for their year of service, "unless there is an Italian or Gallic war emergency" (ch. LXII).
A Caesarian colonial charter, drafted 44 BC (with later interpolation debated chapter by chapter in the scholarship), for the colonia Genetiva Iulia founded on Caesar's order at Urso in Baetica. The bronze tablets, engraved in the Flavian period, were found at Osuna from 1870/71 onwards. What survives runs from chapter LXI to CXXXIV, with major gaps (LXVIII, LXX, LXXXIII–XC, C, CVII, CX–CXXII are lost; CVIII is a two-line fragment).
Both follow M. H. Crawford et al., Roman Statutes I (London 1996) 393–454, no. 25, as carried in the working PDF from which this page was machine-extracted. Editorial conventions of that source preserved here: < > editorial correction, [ ] restoration, ( ) expansion of abbreviation, / line-division on the bronze, |N| every fourth line numbered, vacat blank space. Not preserved: the source marks damaged letters by underlining, which the text layer cannot carry — readers needing the diplomatic record of damage must consult Crawford's print edition.
The chapter texts were extracted programmatically from the source PDF — not retyped — and the Latin/English split was made by the line-division mark /, which the edition prints on every Latin line. One mechanical repair was applied and is disclosed here: the PDF's text layer drops fi/ffi/fl ligatures (so the source reads "o ce", "ponti ces", "sacri cium"); ninety-four such breaks were repaired from an explicit replacement table (e.g. office, pontifices, sacrificium). No other alteration was made to either language. Chapter topic labels and the one-line summaries are editorial, written for this page.
Lex Irnitana — the Flavian municipal law of AD 91, 135 years and one constitutional category away: the natural pairing for anyone asking what changed between a Caesarian colonia and a Flavian municipium. · Orders & ladders — where this charter's establishment and salary figures stand beside the senatorial, equestrian and familia Caesaris hierarchies. · Cursus honorum — the senatorial career modelled year by year. · The Greco-Roman Corpus of Public Documents.