Decimus Terentius Gentianus

Decimus Terentius Gentianus was a Roman senator of the 2nd century AD who held a number of offices in the imperial service, serving as suffect consul in 116 with Lucius Co[...] as his colleague.[1] Ronald Syme has asserted he was the son of Decimus Terentius Scaurianus, one of Trajan's generals; if so, his origins may be in Gallia Narbonensis.[2]

Sources

Compared to his contemporaries, Gentianus' life is surprisingly well documented. His name not only appears on several inscriptions, but he is mentioned in the Historia Augusta, as well as being the recipient of a rescript from Hadrian. However, until recently most of our information about Gentianus centered on his final years, leaving his life prior to his consulate extremely skeletal: information about his cursus honorum was known solely from a fragmentary inscription in Sarmizegetusa.[3]. However, in 2021 professor Lyudmil Vagalinski, lead archaeologist of the excavations of Heraclea Sintica near the modern day town of Petrich in Bulgaria, discovered a marble slab (height 55 cm, width 81 cm, depth 12 cm), containing 19 rows of text written in Ancient Greek, which was officially translated at Sofia University by Nikolay Sharankov. [4] This allowed the reconstruction of a much fuller biography for Gentianus, which also included a number of interesting details.

Life and career

Prior to acceding to the consulate, Gentianus held the usual posts of military tribune, quaestor, plebeian tribune, praetor, then governor of an imperial province; however, the portions of the inscription which identifies which legion he was tribune of and the name of the province he governed are both missing.

However the inscription from Sarmizegetusa attests Gentianus was admitted to the College of Pontiffs. He also supervised the census of the public province of Macedonia. The last documented act of Gentianus involved his intervention in a boundary dispute in Macedonia. He queried the emperor Hadrian concerning the appropriate punishments for moving a boundary stone; Hadrian issued to him a rescript written 17 August 119, stating that any such punishment should depend on the social rank of the offender. A person of standing obviously moved the stone to grab his neighbor's land, and should be banished; servants should receive two years' hard labor, although if the stone was moved through ignorance, a beating would suffice.[5] Although there is no record of the outcome of this case, tangible evidence of this case exists in the form of an inscription recovered from Pelagonia (near modern Vitolište, North Macedonia) dated to 120, which not only bore Gentianus' name, but that of a soldier from Legio I Minervia, Claudianus Maximus.[6]

More information is available about his death. According to the Historia Augusta, during the reign of Hadrian, Gentianus had become highly esteemed by his fellow Senators. In spite of this, or because of it, towards the end of his reign Hadrian came to dislike him, although the emperor had considered making Gentianus his successor. The Historia Augusta strongly implies that Terentius Gentianus was one of many put to death "either openly or by craft".[7]

We have no firm evidence for the date of Gentianus' death. In the 14th century was seen the first six lines of a poem inscribed on one of the Pyramids of Giza, addressed to "a most sweet brother" named "Decimus Gentianus".[8] Hermann Dessau, and others after him, identify that person with this Gentianus which would make the poetess his sister, Terentia.[9] According to Anthony Birley, she was married to Lucius Lollianus Avitus; he speculates that Terentia and her husband joined the imperial entourage at Ephesus in 129 and traveled with them to Roman Egypt. "It is difficult to find an occasion otherwise when persons of senatorial rank — normally barred from entering Egypt — could have gone there, if not in the imperial entourage." He concludes that it is plausible that she had recently heard news of her brother's death, which was the occasion for her poem.[10]

Terentia Inscription

The referral to Gentianus on a bygone Latin inscription on the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza, immortalised in 1335 by a German pilgrim, Wilhelm von Boldensele, is widely agreed to have been carved (or likely dictated) by his sister Terentia, who visited Egypt some time after AD 130 after the Emperor Hadrian's tour of the country, after which Gentianus had died.[11]

The poem read:

I have seen the pyramids, but without you, sweetest brother;
and I have poured out what offering I could — my tears of sorrow.
I incise this lament, too; it carries the memory of our anguish.
Thus on a lofty pyramid there may survive the name
of Decimus Gentianus: priest; companion of Trajan,
at your triumphs; censor, too, and consul, all inside a thirty-year span.

Vidi pyramidas sine te, dulcissime frater,
et tibi, quod potui, lacrimas hic maesta profudi,
et nostri memorem luctus hanc sculpo querelam.
Si<c> nomen Decimi <G>entia<n>i pyramide alta, pontiÀcis comitisque tuis, Traiane, triumphis,
lustra<que> sex intra censoris, consulis, e<x>s<t>e<t>.
(CIL III, 21 and CIL III, 6625 = ILS 1046A = CLE 270)[12]

Though the poem is that of an amateur, Terentia falls into a tradition of Greek and Roman visitors carving inscriptions, sometimes of an epigrammatic nature, onto Egyptian monuments as part of their travels, such as those carved by the likewise learned Roman female visitors Julia Balbilla and Caecilia Trebulla on the Colossi of Memnon in Thebes. Terentia's emotional lament in memory of her deceased brother reflects on the success of his career and is thus a sign of her pietas (piety) to him. Moreover, it is revealing of her erudition as a Roman elite woman. Her wish that her brother could have witnessed the pyramids as she had is a conventional theme found in Greco-Roman tourists' visits to Egyptian monuments, and her style bears witness to her education and culture, containing allusions to the famed verses of Horace, Ovid and, perhaps, Catullus.[13]

Heraclea Sintica Inscription

In 2021 prof. Lyudmil Vagalinski, lead archaeologist of the excavations of Heraclea Sintica near modern day town of Petrich, Bulgaria discovered a marble slab (height 55 cm, width 81 cm, depth 12 cm), containing 19 rows of text written in Ancient Greek and officially translated at Sofia University by Nikolay Sharankov. The inscription reveals detailed information on the career of Gentianus:

The city (honours) Decimus Terentius Gentianus Gnaeus
Minicius Faustinus, son of Decimus, of the Quirina tribe – one of
the four men in charge of street maintenance; tribune of the legions
Eleventh Claudian Dutiful and Loyal, Eighth Augustan, and First
Minervian Dutiful and Loyal, awarded with military decorations by
Emperor Nerva Trajan Caesar Augustus Germanicus Dacicus during
the second Dacian campaign: two crowns, two spears and banner;
quaestor of the emperor, in charge of recruitment in the province of
Africa; plebeian tribune; praetor; legate of the legions Second Trajanic
Brave and Second Assistant Dutiful and Loyal, awarded with military
decorations by Emperor Caesar Nerva Trajan Optimus Augustus
Germanicus Dacicus Parthicus for the Parthian campaign: four
crowns, four spears, four banners; consul; pontifex; curator of public
buildings; censor of the province of Macedonia. In the year 153 of the
Augustan era, which is also 269 [= AD 121/122].

References

  1. ^ Werner Eck, "Konsuln des Jahres 117 in Militärdiplomen Traians mit Tribunicia Potestas XX", Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 185 (2013), pp. 235–238
  2. ^ Syme, Tacitus 1958, (Oxford: University Press, 1997), p. 242. This identification has been adopted by subsequent experts: Anthony Birley, Hadrian: the Restless Emperor (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 106 ISBN 9780415228121
  3. ^ CIL III, 1463
  4. ^ Sofia University, [1]
  5. ^ Digest 47.21.2; Birley, Hadrian, p. 106
  6. ^ AE 1924, 00057 = AE 1979, 00563
  7. ^ Historia Augusta, Hadrian, 23.5
  8. ^ CIL III, 21
  9. ^ ILS 1046a
  10. ^ Birley, Hadrian, p. 246
  11. ^ Plant, Ian Michael (2004). Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome: An Anthology. University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 155–56. ISBN 0-8061-3622-7.
  12. ^ Nisbet, Gideon (2007). Roman Imperial Receptions of Hellenistic Epigrams (Brill's Companion to Hellenistic Epigram, Down to Philip ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. p. 558. ISBN 978-90-47-41940-2.
  13. ^ Hemelrijk, Emily A. (1999). Matrona Docta: Educated Women in the Roman Elite from Cornelia to Julia Domna. London: Routledge. pp. 165–66. ISBN 978-0415341271.

Further reading

  • W. Williams, "Individuality in the imperial constitutions: Hadrian and the Antonines", Journal of Roman Studies, 66 (1976), pp. 67-83.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.