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.
Good Fortune. In the consulship of Fulvius Pius and Pontius Proculus, on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of January: copied and checked, a transcript made from the book of petitions answered by our lord the Emperor Caesar Marcus Antonius Gordianus Pius Felix Augustus and posted up at Rome in the portico of the Baths of Trajan, in the words written below. Submitted by Aurelius Purrus, soldier of the Tenth Praetorian Cohort, Pious and Faithful, Gordian's own, of the century of Proculus, a fellow-villager and joint-landholder.
To the Emperor Caesar Marcus Antonius Gordianus Pius Felix Augustus, a petition from the villagers of Skaptopara, also called the Greseitai. In your most fortunate and everlasting reign you have often written in reply that villages should be settled and improved, rather than that their inhabitants should be driven from their homes; and such a thing is indeed both for the preservation of mankind and for the benefit of your most sacred treasury. Therefore we too bring a lawful supplication before your divinity, praying that you graciously assent to us in our need.
We dwell and hold property in the aforesaid village, which is desirable because it has the use of hot springs and lies midway between two military camps in your Thrace. As long as its inhabitants once remained untroubled and unshaken, they paid their taxes and the other levies in full. But when, from time to time, certain people began to give way to insolence and violence, then the village too began to dwindle. Two miles from our village a famous fair is held; and those who gather there for the fair's sake, for fifteen days, do not stay at the fairground but leave it and come over into our village, and compel us to provide them lodging and to furnish, free of charge, very many other things for their entertainment. Besides these, soldiers despatched elsewhere leave their proper roads and turn aside to us, and likewise press us to provide them lodging and supplies, paying no price at all. The governors of the province come too, mostly for the use of the waters, and your procurators as well; the magistrates we receive most hospitably, as we must — but, unable to bear the rest, we have appealed many times to the governors of Thrace, who, in keeping with the divine instructions, ordered that we be left untroubled. For we declared that we could no longer endure, but had it in mind to abandon even our ancestral homes because of the violence of those who descend on us; and indeed we have truly been reduced from many householders to very few.
For a time the governors' orders held, and no one troubled us with a demand for lodging or the furnishing of supplies; but as the years went on, very many again dared to fasten themselves upon us, scorning our private and humble station. Since, therefore, we can no longer carry the burdens, and are in truth in danger of doing what the rest have done — abandoning our ancestral homes — for this reason we beseech you, unconquered Augustus, that by your divine rescript you command each man to go by his own road, and not, leaving the other villages, to come upon us, nor to compel us to furnish them supplies free of charge, nor even to provide lodging to those who have no need of it; for the governors have repeatedly ordered that lodging be given to none but those sent out into service by the governors and procurators. And if we are burdened, we shall flee from our homes and the treasury will be saddled with the greatest loss; so that, pitied through your divine providence and remaining in our own places, we may be able to pay the sacred taxes and the other dues. And this will come about for us, in your most fortunate reign, if you command that your divine letter, inscribed on a stele, be publicly displayed — that, having obtained this, we may be able to acknowledge our gratitude to your Fortune, as even now we do, being heard.
Let them present [their case]. Pyrrus the praetorian has come to this petition out of the divine benevolence; and it seems to me that some god has taken thought for the present request. For the fact that the most divine Emperor referred his own cognizance of these matters to you — and had moreover already, beforehand, given rulings on them by proclamations and edicts — this seems to me the work of good fortune. The request was this: the village of the soldier who is being assisted lies in the fairest part of the territory of our city, the city of the Pautalians, well placed for both mountains and plains, and has besides baths of hot waters most suitable not only for pleasure but for the health and treatment of the body; and nearby is a fair, gathered many times in the year, and around the Kalends of October for fifteen days, free of toll.
It has come about, then, that the apparent advantages of this village have, with time, turned into disadvantages for it; for through these aforesaid pretexts many soldiers, often staying there, trouble the village with their billetings and the burdens they impose; and for these causes the village — formerly richer and more populous than it now is — has come to the extremity of poverty. About these things they appealed many times to the governors, and for a while the governors' orders held; but afterwards the matter was neglected, through the long habit of such troubling. For this reason, of necessity, they took refuge with the Augustus.
The Emperor Caesar Marcus Antonius Gordianus Pius Felix Augustus, to the villagers, through Pyrrhus the soldier, joint-landholder: a complaint of this kind, pressed by entreaties, you ought rather to settle by the justice of the governor — instructed about the matters that shall be alleged — than to carry back a fixed ruling by an imperial rescript. I have written in reply. I have read it through. I have sealed it.
The inscription opens not with the petition but with its authentication, in Latin. It is dated by the consuls of AD 238 and certified as a transcript ‘copied and checked’ from the book of petitions answered by the emperor — the imperial register of libelli rescripti — and posted at Rome in the portico of the Baths of Trajan. It was carried back and set up by Aurelius Purrus, a praetorian soldier who was himself a Skaptopara villager and landholder.
The Latin of this certification is the textbook case of a Greek-speaking cutter struggling with Latin: nearly every word carries an editor's correction (‹ ›). It is, even so, the official frame that made the whole document a public, citable act.
The Greek petition (δέησις) begins by addressing Gordian and at once invokes his own record: he has ‘often written in reply’ that villages should be settled and improved, not emptied of their people. The villagers turn the emperor's own past rulings into the ground of their appeal.
And they frame their plea as the emperor would weigh it: keeping villages alive is good both ‘for the preservation of mankind’ and for the imperial treasury — for a deserted village pays no tax. The petition is shrewdly addressed to the emperor's interest as much as to his mercy.
Now the grievance itself. Skaptopara's misfortune is its attractiveness: it has hot springs, and it lies between two army camps and near a famous fair. So it is overrun. The fairgoers, there for the fifteen-day market, leave the fairground and billet themselves on the village, demanding lodging and supplies free of charge.
And the soldiers are worse: despatched elsewhere, they ‘leave their proper roads’ and turn aside to Skaptopara to take lodging and food paying no price at all. It is precisely the abuse of requisition this corpus tracks from the vehiculatio edict onward — here seen from below, in the voice of its victims.
The villagers recount that they have done everything short of this: appealed ‘many times’ to the governors of Thrace, who duly ordered them left in peace — and for a while the orders held. But the troubling always returned, ‘through the long habit’ of it, and the village has fallen from many householders to a few.
So they reach past the governors to the emperor himself. The plea is concrete: a divine rescript ordering travellers to keep to their own roads; and — the petition's sharpest stroke — the warning that if the burden continues they will flee, and the treasury will bear ‘the greatest loss’. They ask that the emperor's answer be cut on a stele and publicly displayed — which is why the document survives.
The stone now turns to the hearing — the case as it came before the provincial governor, carried by Pyrrus the praetorian. The speaker (the governor, or his advocate) reads the affair as providential: that the emperor referred ‘his own cognizance’ of the matter down to the governor, and had already ruled on such things ‘by proclamations and edicts’, is ‘the work of good fortune’.
The village is described again, now from the outside: it lies in the fairest part of the territory of Pautalia, with its mountains, plains, hot baths and its market. The hearing-record confirms, in a second voice, everything the petition had claimed.
The speaker draws the conclusion the petition had drawn: the very things that made Skaptopara desirable — the springs, the fair, the position — have, ‘with time, turned into disadvantages’. The soldiers' billeting has dragged a once richer, more populous village down to ‘the extremity of poverty’.
And the same pattern of failed remedy is owned: appeals to the governors, orders that held for a while, then neglect ‘through the habit of such troubling’. Hence, of necessity, the recourse to the emperor — the act this whole stone records.
And here is the emperor's answer — in Latin, four lines, the point of the whole monument. After all the villagers' eloquence, Gordian rescripts that a complaint of this kind ought to be settled by the justice of the provincial governor (praeses) — properly instructed about the facts — rather than by a fixed ruling handed down from the emperor.
It is a deflection, and a revealing one: the emperor receives the petition, has it registered and posted at Rome, and then returns it to the level it came from. The closing words are the formula of the imperial chancery: rescripsi, recognovi, signavi — ‘I have written in reply, I have read it through, I have sealed it.’