Leiden conventions rendered as EpiDoc: restorations as supplied(reason=lost), gaps as gap, abbreviations as expan(abbr+ex), omitted letters as supplied(reason=omitted), surplus as surplus, corrections as corr. Critical apparatus as listApp. The facing translation is div type=translation; the historical commentary is div type=commentary.
[— of] Germanicus Caesar, who [should never have died. — about the] due [honours] of Germanicus Caesar [— and concerning] that matter, with the advice of Tiberius Caesar Augustus, [our] princeps, [— that] the different proposals be made available to him, and that he, with his accustomed [—], choose [from all those] honours which the senate thought were to be granted, those which [he himself and Iulia] Augusta his mother, and Drusus Caesar, and the mother of Germanicus Caesar — his wife, if possible, having been involved by them in that discussion — considered could suitably be adopted; on this matter [they decreed as follows]:
It was agreed that a marble arch be erected in the Circus Flaminius at public [expense, placed] near the place in which statues have been [erected] to the Divine Augustus and to the imperial house by C. Norbanus Flaccus, with representations of the peoples he conquered; and [that it be inscribed on the front] of that arch that the senate and people of Rome [have dedicated] that monument to the memory of Germanicus Caesar — since he, after the defeat of the Germans in war and their expulsion from Gaul, and the recovery of the military standards, and the taking of revenge for the fraudulent [defeat] of an army of the Roman people, having put in order the affairs of the Gallic provinces, was sent as proconsul to the provinces across the seas, and in setting them and the kingdoms of that region in order on the instructions of Tiberius Caesar Augustus, and having set up a king in Armenia, unsparing in his effort, before he could enter the city with an ovatio by decree of the senate, died in the service of the state. And that above that arch a statue of Germanicus [Caesar] be placed in a triumphal chariot, and at his sides statues of Drusus [Germanicus], his natural father and brother of Tiberius Caesar Augustus, and of Antonia his mother, [and of Agrippina his wife, and of] Livia his sister, and of Tiberius Germanicus his brother, and of his sons and daughters.
And that another arch be built on the ridge of Mount Amanus, which is in [Syria — or, if any] other place [seemed] more suitable to Tiberius Caesar Augustus, our princeps, [in those regions whose] care and guardianship [he had himself entrusted] to Germanicus Caesar by the authority [of the senate;] and that a statue of him be set up there and a plaque [relating to the achievements of Germanicus Caesar] be inscribed. And that a third arch either [be built onto, or be placed beside, that burial mound] which [the army had first begun to raise of its own accord] for Drusus, the brother of Tiberius Caesar Augustus, and then [completed] with the consent of the Divine Augustus — [a statue] of Germanicus Caesar be set up there, receiving back [the military standards from the Germans;] and that the Gauls and Germans who live this side of the Rhine, [whose communities were ordered by the Divine] Augustus to perform religious rites at the burial mound [of Drusus], be instructed to make a [—] sacrifice, [making offerings each year on the day on which Germanicus Caesar had died;] and, since there was in that region [in which the burial mound of Drusus stands — on the birthday] of Germanicus Caesar [— done according to this decree of the senate]. It was likewise agreed that [a monument —] in the forum at [Antioch, where the body of Germanicus Caesar had been cremated; and] that a tribunal be set up [at Daphne, where Germanicus Caesar had died — ].
[— and that each year, on the sixth day before the Ides of October, at that altar] which is [before the burial mound — in his memory] inferiae [be performed publicly] for [his] manes [by the magistri of the sodales] Augustales, clad in dark togas — those of them [for whom it shall be lawful and proper to wear] a toga of natural colour on that day — with the same sacrificial rite with which [inferiae are publicly performed] for the manes of C. and L. Caesar; and that a bronze cippus be placed near that [burial mound, and on it this] decree of the senate be inscribed in the same way as those decrees of the senate were inscribed which had been [passed in honour of C. and L. Caesar]; and that on that day it [not be lawful for the magistrates of the Roman people and those in charge of jurisdiction in] a municipium or colony of Roman citizens or of Latins to transact any serious public business; and that [on that day there be no public banquets henceforth], nor any marriages of Roman citizens nor betrothals, [nor should anyone] take [a loan from another] or give one, nor should games or [shows] take place [nor — ] be heard. And that the Augustan theatrical games, [which were previously accustomed to be held on the sixth day before the Ides of October], should be held on the fifth day before the Nones, by which [—] the days of the theatrical games [— before] the day on which Germanicus Caesar died.
[—] princeps [—] because even the day(s) [—] and speeches [—] to approve his enthusiasm; [—that] the urban and [rural] tribes should attend [—] had promised; and so it was agreed [that — statues] of Germanicus Caesar in triumphal dress [be placed at the expense of the urban plebs] in those public spaces in which the Divine [Augustus and —] had placed [statues of Drusus] Germanicus, with an inscription of the urban plebs; [and that the scroll] which Tiberius Caesar Augustus had read out before that order on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of January, [and] had published [under his edict], be inscribed on bronze and fixed in a public place [wherever] it should please [—]; and that the senate considered this all the more fitting to come about, because the innermost [thoughts of Tiberius] Caesar Augustus, and of Germanicus Caesar his son, contained not so much a laudatio as the course of his whole life and a true witness to his virtue, to be handed down to eternal remembrance; and (because) he himself had testified in that same document that he wished not to dissemble, and judged it useful to the youth of our children and descendants. Likewise, that the respect shown by Drusus Caesar might be the better attested, it was agreed that the document which he had read out at the most recent meeting of the senate be inscribed on bronze and fixed in that place which had pleased his father and himself. And likewise that this decree of the senate be inscribed on bronze, together with that decree of the senate which was passed on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of January, and that that bronze be fixed on the Palatine, in the portico which is by (the temple) of Apollo, in the templum in which the senate was held; and likewise that the senate wished and judged it right — the more readily to make plain the devotion of every order towards the domus Augusta and the agreement of all citizens in honouring the memory of Germanicus Caesar — that the consuls publish this decree of the senate under their edict, and order the magistrates and ambassadors of the municipia and colonies to send a written copy to the municipia and colonies of Italy and to those colonies which were in the provinces; and that those who governed in the provinces would act rightly and properly if they took care that this decree of the senate be fixed in as public a place as possible. And that M. Messalla and M. Aurelius Cotta Maximus, the consuls designate, when they had entered office, at the first opportunity at which the auspices allowed, without the declaration of two or three nundinae, should see to it that a statute on the honours of Germanicus Caesar be carried before the people. They so decreed. Two hundred and eighty-five were present in the senate. This decree of the senate was made a single one by a second relatio.
The decree opens with a praescriptio now almost entirely lost, and then with something rare in a Roman public document: an account of how the honours were chosen. The Senate did not simply decree; it drew up a copia sententiarum, a body of proposals, and placed them before the emperor Tiberius, who — with Livia (Iulia Augusta), Drusus Caesar, and the dead man's mother Antonia, and his widow Agrippina ‘if possible’ — was to choose which to adopt (Crawford, Roman Statutes I, 1996, no. 37, 533).
The involvement of the whole imperial family is, as Crawford notes, a new feature: in AD 14, on the death of Augustus, only Tiberius and Livia had been so involved. The transition to the decisions of the Senate proper comes with the formula d(e) e(a) r(e) i(ta) c(ensuere) — ‘on this matter they decreed as follows’ — which the edition restores at the end of line 8. From there the decree runs as a single sustained sentence to its close (Crawford, Roman Statutes I, 1996, no. 37, 533).
The first honour decreed is a marble ianus — an honorific arch — in the Circus Flaminius, carrying a triumphal-chariot statue of Germanicus flanked by statues of his whole family: his natural father the elder Drusus, his mother Antonia, his wife Agrippina, his sister Livilla, his brother Claudius, his uncle Tiberius, and his children. The clause is the fullest surviving statement of the dynastic statue-group as a political form (Crawford, Roman Statutes I, 1996, no. 37, 533).
The inscription to be cut on the arch is, in effect, an official obituary — and a politically managed one. It credits Germanicus with defeating the Germans, expelling them from Gaul, recovering the lost military standards, and avenging the fraudulenta clades (the disaster of Varus); but it names no tribe, no battle, no advance to the Elbe. As scholars have observed, the careful vagueness signals the Tiberian decision, taken in AD 16, to abandon the conquest of Germany — the decree rewriting the war as a limited mission of revenge and protection, accomplished (Crawford, Roman Statutes I, 1996, no. 37, 533; Tacitus, Annals 2.83).
Two further arches follow, marking the two theatres of Germanicus's career. The second stands on the ridge of Mount Amanus in Syria, the eastern command in which he died; the third rises on the Rhine, beside the cenotaph of his father the elder Drusus, and shows Germanicus receiving back the captured Roman standards from the Germans. The Gauls and Germans west of the Rhine, whose communities Augustus had ordered to perform rites at Drusus's tomb, are now to make a yearly offering on the anniversary of Germanicus's death as well (Crawford, Roman Statutes I, 1996, no. 37, 534).
The section closes with monuments at the place of death: a memorial in the forum at Antioch, where the body was cremated, and a tribunal at Daphne, where he died. Almost every monument in this section — the three arches, the Antioch tomb, the Daphne tribunal — reappears, compressed into a single sentence, in Tacitus's account of the honours (Annals 2.83); the comparison is set out in view III (Crawford, Roman Statutes I, 1996, no. 37, 534).
Column I of Fragment (b) turns from monuments to time. It fixes the anniversary of the death — the sixth day before the Ides of October, 10 October — as a day of public mourning across the Roman world: inferiae at the tomb by the magistri of the sodales Augustales, a bronze cippus carrying this decree, and a ban on serious public business, banquets, marriages, betrothals, loans, games and shows — in every municipium and colony of Roman or Latin status (Crawford, Roman Statutes I, 1996, no. 37, 534).
The honours are, throughout, modelled on those for Gaius and Lucius Caesar: the rite is ‘the same with which inferiae are performed for the manes of C. and L. Caesar’, the cippus inscribed ‘as those decrees were inscribed which were passed in their honour’. The column ends with a calendrical adjustment — moving the Augustan theatrical games off the death-day — a small, precise piece of administrative tact (Crawford, Roman Statutes I, 1996, no. 37, 534–535).
The decree's final column gathers the honours of the people and the knights, the publication clause, and the vote itself. The urban plebs is to set up statues of Germanicus in triumphal dress; the scroll Tiberius read in the Senate — his own memorial of his son — is to be inscribed on bronze, the decree noting, in a remarkable phrase, that it contained ‘not so much a laudatio as the course of his whole life and a true witness to his virtue’ (Crawford, Roman Statutes I, 1996, no. 37, 535).
The publication clause is the decree's most consequential: the consuls are to publish it under their edict and send copies to the municipia and colonies of Italy and the provinces — the order that scattered the Tabula Siarensis across the empire. The decree then closes with the instruction that gave rise to the Lex Valeria Aurelia: the consuls designate M. Messalla and M. Aurelius Cotta are to carry a lex before the people. The Senate's verdict — censuere — and the register of those present — 285 senators — close the document, with the note that it had been made a single decree ‘by a second relatio’ (Crawford, Roman Statutes I, 1996, no. 37, 535, 562).