Lambaesis, as we have seen, was one of those camps which developed into a regular municipality, after the recognition of soldiers’ marriages by Septimius Severus. Henceforth the camp became only a place of drill and exercise, and ceased to be the soldier’s home. And on the ground where the soldiers’ huts used to stand, there are left the remains of a number of buildings of the basilica shape, erected probably in the third century, which were the club-houses of the officers of the Tertia Augusta. The interior was adorned with statues of imperial personages, and on the wall was inscribed the law of the college, [pg 284]commencing with an expression of gratitude for the very liberal pay which enabled the college to make provision for the future of its members.[1565] The provision was made in various ways. An ambitious young officer was allowed a liberal viaticum for a journey across the sea to seek promotion. If promotion came, he received another grant to equip him. One half the amount granted in these cases was mercifully paid to him in the unpleasant contingency of his losing his grade. If he died on active service, his heir received a payment on the larger scale. And, when a man, in due course, retired from the army, he received the same sum under the name of anularium, which has puzzled the antiquary.[1566]
It has been maintained that these military clubs were really and primarily funerary societies.[1567] And provision for burial was certainly one of their objects. Yet, on a reading of the law of the society of the Cornicines, it may be doubted whether the subject of burial is more prominent than the other contingencies of the officer’s life, and in some of the inscriptions, burial is not even alluded to. The grant on retirement or promotion, and the grant to his heir on the death of a member, are the same. But probably the majority of officers had the good fortune to carry the money with them into peaceful retirement, if not into higher rank in another corps. In this case they would probably join another college, whether of soldiers or veterans, and secure once more the all-important object of a decent and pious interment. The military clubs seem rather intended to furnish an insurance against the principal risks and occasions of expenditure in a soldier’s career. A calculation shows that, after providing for all these liabilities, the military college must have had a considerable surplus.[1568] How it was spent, it is not hazardous to conjecture. If the poor freedmen and slaves at Ostia or Lanuvium could afford their modest meals, with a fair allowance of good wine, drunk to the memory of a generous [pg 285]benefactor, we may be sure that the college of the Cornicines at Lambesi would relieve the tedium of the camp by many a pleasant mess dinner, and that they would have been astonished and amused on such occasions to hear themselves described merely as a burial society.
The foundation law of the college of Diana and Antinous betrays some anxiety lest the continuity of the society should be broken. And in many a bequest, the greatest care is taken to prevent malversation or the diversion of the funds from their original purpose.[1569] We feel a certain pathetic curiosity, in reading these records of a futile effort to prolong the memory of obscure lives, to know how long the brotherhoods continued their meetings, or when the stated offerings of wine and flowers ceased to be made. In one case the curiosity is satisfied and we have before our eyes the formal record of the extinction of a college. It is contained in a pair of wooden tablets found in some quarry pits near Alburnus, a remote village of Dacia. The document was drawn up, as the names of the consuls show, in the year 167, the year following the fierce irruption of the Quadi and Marcomanni into Dacia, Pannonia, and Noricum, in which Alburnus was given to the flames.[1570] Artemidorus the slave of Apollonius, and Master of the college of Jupiter Cernenius, along with the two quaestors, places it on record, with the attestation of seven witnesses, that the college has ceased to exist. Out of a membership of fifty-four, only seventeen remain. The colleague of Artemidorus in the mastership has never set foot in Alburnus since his election. The accounts have been wound up, and no balance is left in the chest. For a long time no member has attended on the days fixed for meetings, and, as a matter of course, no subscriptions have been paid. All this is expressed in the rudest, most ungrammatical Latin, and Artemidorus quaintly concludes by saying, that, if a member has just died, he must not imagine that he has any longer a college or any claim to funeral payments! The humble brothers of the society, whom [pg 286]Artemidorus reproaches for their faithless negligence, may probably have fled to some refuge when their masters’ lands were devastated by the Marcomanni, or been swept on in the fierce torrent of invaders which finally broke upon the walls of Aquileia.