50
J. H. D'Arms
in having been elected duovir on four occasions; he also appears
in a time of crisis (after the earthquake of A.D. 62) as praefectus
iure dicundo lege Petronia. As is well known, in Julio-Claudian
Italy, praefecti were persons appointed to take the place of formally elected city magistrates. It was also standard practice,
when an emperor or a member of the imperial family honored a town
by accepting the title of IIvir, for the decuriones to select a
particularly distinguished local notable to discharge the actual
duties of office. Thus, in the Pompeian case, C. Cuspius Pansa's
unusually distinguished standing among the citizenry, which is indicated by his multiple duovirates, is further corroborated by his
selection as praefectus: he is, in short, the exception who proves
Zevi's rule.
One Pompeian scholar has conjectured that the personal intervention of the emperor Nero lay behind the apointment of C. Cuspius
Pansa as praefectus. That must remain hypothetical, but it is
worth drawing attention to a striking contemporary inscription
from Luni, from which it emerges that the local notable L. Titinius
L.f. Glaucus Lucretianus attained a fourth duovirate with censorial
powers beneficio divi Claudi; later, as praefectus, he stood in for
Nero in a magistracy honoris causa, and was elevated to a Roman
8
priesthood also at Nero's instigation. Here the explicit indication of imperial favor (beneficium), as well as the prefecture,
combine to strengthen Zevi's hypothesis, that multiple municipal
duovirates were indeed a rarity in the changed world of JulioClaudian Italy. Moreover, careers of local magnates like
5 CIL X, 790; praefectus iure dicundo lege Petronia: CIL X,
858 (= ILS, 6359). For the date of the prefecture, see P. Castren,
Ordo Populusque Pompeianus: Polity and Society in Roman Pompeii,
Act. Inst. Rom. Fint. VIII (1975) 112; cf. G. 0. Onorato, Iscrizioni Pompeiane: La vita pubblica (Florence, 1957) 114 (arguing
for an earlier date).
6 See in general F. F. Abbott and A. C. Johnson, Municipal
Administration in the Roman Empire (Princeton, 1926) 62ff.; cf.
also R. Meiggs, Roman Ostia, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1973) 175; for two
Tiberian examples, cf. ILS, 6285, 6286.
7 Castren, Ordo Populusque Pompeianus, seems so to imply
(61, 67, 112).
8 CIL XI, 6955 (= ILS, 8902):...L. Titinius L.f. Gal.
Glauous Lucretianus duovir IIII quinq. primus creatus beneficio
divi Claudii, praefectus Neronis Claudi Caesaris Aug., patronus
coloniae, sevir equitum Romanorum, curio sacrorum faciundorum, fl.
Romae, flamen Aug. beneficio (sc. Neronis) Caesaris creatus...
(A.D. 63); cf. CIL XI, 1331 (= ILS, 233).
