1. Among the earliest occasions for committing to writing agreements, which may be supposed to have been originally verbal only, must certainly be reckoned international transactions (leges foederis or foedera). At the head of the prose records written in the Latin language we find the treaties of alliance of Tullus Hostilius with the Sabini (Dionysius Halic. iii. 33), of Servius Tullius with the Latini (Dionysius iv. 26; Festus p. 169; this was, partly, at the same time, as will afterwards appear, the oldest document of the sacred class), of the second Tarquinius with Gabii (Dionysius iv. 58; Festus, Epit. p. 56). They are followed, in the oldest republican period, by the celebrated foedera with Carthage; by the pacts of Sp. Cassius Vecellinus with the Latini of the year 261 (493 B.C.), which Cicero seems to have seen still in the forum behind the rostra, written on a bronze column (Pro Balbo, 23, 53; see also Livy ii. 33; Festus p. 166; and Mommsen’s Römische Forschungen, ii. 153 sq.); and by the foedus Ardeatinum of 310 (444 B.C.) mentioned by Livy (iv. 7). Of all these documents nothing has been preserved in an authentic form, save some few words quoted from them by the ancient grammarians. Of one foedus only is there a fragment still in existence, relating to the Oscan civitas libera Bantia (C.I.L. i. 197); it contains the clausula of the foedus, which was written in Latin and in Oscan (see [Apulia]). On account of this peculiar circumstance, the document gave occasion to Klenze, and afterwards to Mommsen, to resume (for the sake of Roman jurisprudence, in the first instance) inquiry into the Oscan and other Italian dialects. Some other Roman foedera are preserved only in Greek, e.g. that with the Jews of the year 594 (160 B.C.)(Josephus, Ant. xii. 6. 10). Some others, made with the same nation between 610 and 615 (144 and 139 B.C.) (Jos. Ant. xiii. 5. 6 and 7. 8), are mentioned in an abridged form only, or given in that of a senatus consultum, to which they must formally be ascribed. Amongst the foedera may be reckoned also the curious oath, sworn, perhaps, according to a general rule obtaining for all civitates foederatae, by the citizens of a Lusitanian oppidum, Aritium, to Gaius Caesar on his accession to the throne in A.D. 37 (C.I.L. ii. 172; Wil. 2839).
Closely related to the foedera are the pacts between communities and private individuals, respecting patronatus or hospitium (tabulae patronatus et hospitii), also, when in small portable form, tesserae hospitales; cf. Plautus, Poen. 1047, of which many specimens from the end of the republic down to a late period of the empire have been preserved (see Gazzera, Memorie dell’ Academia di Torino, vol. xxxv., 1831, p. 1 sq., and Mommsen, Römische Forschungen, i. 341 sq.). Of the numerous examples scattered through the different volumes of the Corpus may be quoted the tessera Fundana, containing the pact of hospitality between the community of Fundi and a certain Ti. Claudius (who cannot, with certainty, be identified), the oldest hitherto known, in the form of a bronze fish (C.I.L. i. 532; Henz. 7000; Wil. 2849); the tabula of the pagus Gurzensium in Africa, delivering the patronate to L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, Nero’s grandfather, in 742 (12 B.C.), in the afterwards solemn form of a tabella fastigata, to be fixed in the atrium of the person honoured (Orel. 3693; Wil. 2850); that of the civitas Pallantina with a peregrinus named Acces Licirni of the year 752 (2 B.C.) (Ephem. epigr. i. 141; Hermes, v., 1871, p. 371 seq.); that of Lacilbula, in Spain, with one Q. Marius Balbus, of A.D. 5 (C.I.L. ii. 1393); that of the Bocchoritani on the island of Majorca, of A.D. 6 (C.I.L. ii. 3695; Wil. 2851); the four relating to C. Silius Aviola, dating from A.D. 27 to 28, all found at Brescia (C.I.L. v. 4919-4922); that of the colonia Julia Aug. legionis vii. Tupusuctu, in Africa, with the imperial legate Q. Julius Secundus, of A.D. 55 (C.I.L. viii. 8837; Wil. 2851); that of two gentilitates, the Desonci and Tridiavi, of the gens of the Zoelae, in Spain, now in the museum of Berlin, which contains an older act of the year 27, and another more recent of the year A.D. 127 (C.I.L. ii. 2633; Orel. 156); that of the respublica Pompelonensis (Pampeluna in Spain) of A.D. 185 (C.I.L. ii. 2960; Wil. 2854); that of the Segisamonenses, in Spain, of A.D. 239, now in the museum at Burgos (Ephem. epigr. ii. 322); that of the fabri subidiani (i.e. subaediani, qui sub aede consistunt) of Cordova, of A.D. 348 (C.I.L. ii. 2211; Wil. 2861); and, in addition to many others, those found together at Rome, on the site of the palace of Q. Aradius Valerius Proculus, and belonging to him and other members of his family, from divers African cities and executed in A.D. 321 and 322 (C.I.L. vi. 1684-1688; Orel. 1079, 3058).
2. Hardly inferior in antiquity, and of superior value, are the remains of laws in the stricter sense of the word (leges and plebiscita), preserved to us in the originals, although unfortunately only in fragments more or less extensive. Of those laws the oldest and most important are the lex Acilia (for so it is in all probability to be styled) repetundarum of the year 631 (C.I.L. i. 198), which is incised on a bronze table about 2 metres broad, in 90 lines of about 200 to 240 letters each, and therefore extremely inconvenient to read, and the lex agraria of 643 (111 B.C.), written on the reverse of the table of the Acilia, abrogated shortly afterwards (C.I.L. i. 200); this is the third of the celebrated laws of C. Gracchus bearing upon the division of public lands. Then follow the lex Cornelia de viginti quaestoribus, a fragment of Sulla’s legislation, the eighth table only, of the whole set, being preserved (C.I.L. i. 202); the plebiscitum de Thermensibus, on the autonomy of Termessus in Pisidia, proposed by the tribuni plebis, in 682 (72 B.C.), one of four or five large bronze plates (C.I.L. i. 204); the lex Rubria de civitate Galliae cisalpinae of 705 (49 B.C.), written in a new and more convenient form (belonging as it does to Caesar’s legislation), in two columns, with numbered divisions, being the fourth out of an unknown number of plates (C.I.L. i. 205); the lex Julia municipalis, or, from the place where it was found, the tabulae Heracleenses of 709 (45 B.C.), written on the reverse of the much older Greek law of that community, preserved partly at Naples, partly in the British Museum (C.I.L. i. 206), also a fragment of Caesar’s general municipal institutions; it contains a curious passage relating to the public promulgation of laws (v. 15). These are the laws of the Roman republic preserved in important fragments; some minor ones (brought together in C.I.L. i. 207-211) may be left out of account here. In the imperial age, laws in general were replaced by senatus consulta or by imperial decrees. It was also in the form of a senatus consultum that the leges de imperio, on the accession of the emperors, seem to have been promulgated. An example of such a law, preserved in part on a bronze tablet found at Rome, is the lex de imperio Vespasiani (C.I.L. vi. 930; Orel. i. 567). There is, besides, one special category of imperial constitutions which continued to be named leges, viz. the constitutions given by the emperors to the divers classes of civitates, based upon the ancient traditional rules of government applied to Rome itself as well as to the coloniae and municipia. Of this sort of leges some very valuable specimens have come from Spanish soil, viz. the lex coloniae Juliae Genetivae Urbanorum sive Ursonis (now Osuna), given to that colony by Caesar in 710 (44 B.C.), but incised, with some alterations, in the time of Vespasian, of which three bronze tables out of a much larger number remain (Hübner and Mommsen, Ephem. epigr. ii. 150 sq. and 221 sq.); the lex Salpensana and the lex Malacitana, given to these two municipia by Domitian, between A.D. 81 and 84, each on a large bronze plate, written respectively in two and in five columns, with the single chapters numbered and rubricated (C.I.L. ii. 1963, 1964; compare Mommsen, “Die Stadtrechte der lateinischen Gemeinden Salpensa und Malacca in der Provinz Baetica,” in the Abhandlungen der sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, philol.-histor. Classe, vol. iii., 1857, p. 363 sq.); the lex metalli Vipascensis, given, with all probability, by one of the three Flavii, as a constitution to a mining district of southern Portugal, one bronze plate numbered iii.—three or more, therefore, being lost (see Hübner, Ephem. epigr. iii. 165 sq. and, for a popular account, the Deutsche Rundschau, August 1877, p. 196 sq.). The so-called military diplomas, although in certain respects nearly related to the leges of the later period, are better placed along with the imperial decrees.
3. A third species of official documents is formed by decrees of the senate of Rome, of the analogous corporations in the coloniae and municipia, and of the divers collegia and sodalicia, constituted, as a rule, after a similar fashion and debating in nearly the same way as the Roman and the municipal senates. The oldest Roman senatus consulta are those translated into the Greek language and containing treaties of alliance, as already mentioned. They are preserved either on monuments or by ancient authors, as Josephus: e.g. the fragment found at Delphi, from the year 568 (186 B.C.), and the senatus consultum Thisbaeum, from Thisbe in Boeotia, 584 (170 B.C.) (Ephem. epigr. i. 278 sq., ii. 102, and Joh. Schmidt, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung, vol. iii., 1881), those of 616, 619, 621, 649 (138-105 B.C.) (C. I. Graec. 2905, 2908, ii. 2485, 2737; Le Bas and Waddington iii. 195-198; Annali dell’ Instituto, vol. xix. 1847, p. 113; Ephem. epigr. iv. 213 sq.), and those relating to the Jews, dating from 615, 621 and 710 (139, 133 and 44 B.C.) (Josephus, Ant. xiii. 9. 2, xiv. 8. 5 and 10. 9). The two oldest senatus consulta written in Latin are also preserved in a more or less complete form only by ancient authors; they are the sc. de philosophis et rhetoribus of 593 (161 B.C.) (Gellius, Noct. Att. xv. 11. 1) and that de hastis Martiis of 655 (99 B.C.) (Gellius iv. 6. 2). The only one belonging to the oldest period preserved in the original Latin form, of which only a part exists, together with the Greek translation, is the sc. Lutatianum, relating to Asclepiades of Clazomenae and his companions, dating from 676 (77 B.C.) (C.I.L. i. 203). The rest, belonging to the later epoch from Cicero downwards, about twenty in number, are mostly preserved only in an abridged form by ancient writers,—such as Cicero, Frontinus, Macrobius,—or in Justinian’s Digesta (see Hübner, De senatus populique Romani actis, Leipzig, 1859, p. 66 sq.); a few exist, however, in a monumental form, complete or in fragments—as the two sc. on the ludi saeculares, dating from 17 B.C. and A.D. 47, preserved on a marble slab found at Rome (C.I.L. vi. 877); the fragments of two sc. in honour of Germanicus and the younger Drusus, from Rome, on bronze tablets (C.I.L. vi. 911-912; Henz. 5381-5282); the two sc. Hosidianum and Volusianum, containing regulations for the demolition and rebuilding of houses in Rome, incised on the same bronze plate, found at Herculaneum, dating from Nero’s time, between A.D. 41 and 46 and from 56 (Orel. 3115; Mommsen, Berichte der sächs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, philol.-histor. Classe, 1852, p. 272 sq.); and, of a later period, the sc. Cassianum or Nonianum of A.D. 138, containing a market regulation for the saltus Beguensis in Africa, where it has been found preserved in two examples on stone slabs (Ephem. epigr. ii. 271 sq., not complete in Wil. 2838), and the fragment of that for Cyzicus, belonging to the reign of Antoninus Pius (Ephem. epigr. iii. 156 sq.). There exists, besides, a chapter of a sc., relating to the collegia, inserted in the decree of a collegium at Lanuvium, to be mentioned below. Of the municipal decrees, of which a greater number is preserved (see Hübner, De sen. populique Rom. actis, p. 71 sq.), only a few of the more important may be mentioned here: the lex Puteolana de parieti faciundo of 649 (105 B.C.) (C.I.L. i. 577; Orel. 3697; Wil. 697); the two decreta (or so-called cenotaphia) Pisana in honour of Lucius and Gaius Caesar, the grandsons of Augustus, of A.D. 3 (C.I.L. xi. 1420, 1421; Orel. 642, 643; Wil. 883); the decretum Lanuvinum of A.D. 133, containing the regulations of a collegium funeraticium, styled collegium salutare Dianae et Antinoi (Orel. 6086; Wil. 319); and the decretum Tergestinum, belonging to the time of Antoninus Pius (C.I.L. v. 532; Henz. 7167; Wil. 693). There are, however, more than thirty others preserved, some of them, such as those from Naples, written in the Greek language. Of the third speciality, the decreta collegiorum, only the lex collegii aquae of the 1st century (Marini, Atti de’ fratelli arvali, p. 70; Rudorff and Mommsen, Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, vol. xv., 1850, pp. 203, 345 sq.), and the lex collegii Aesculapii et Hygiae, of 153 (C.I.L. vi. 10,234; Orel. 2417; Wil. 320) need be mentioned here; many more exist. One of them, the lex collegii Jovis Cerneni, dating from A.D. 167, found at Alburnus major in Dacia, is preserved on the original tabella cerata on which it was written (C.I.L. iii. 924; Henz. 6087; Wil. 321).
4. The fourth species of instrumenta are the decrees, sometimes in the form of letters, of Roman and municipal magistrates, and of the emperors and their functionaries, incised, as a rule, on bronze tablets. The oldest decree in the Latin language which has been preserved is that of L. Aemilius Paulus, when praetor in Hispania Baetica, dating from 189 B.C., for the Turris Lascutana in southern Spain (C.I.L. ii. 5041; Wil. 2837); of the same date is a Greek one of Cn. Manlius, consul of the year 565, for the Heracleenses Cariae (Le Bas and Waddington n. 588). Then follow the famous epistula consulum (falsely styled senatus consultum) ad Teuranos de bacchanalibus, dated 568 (186 B.C.) (C.I.L. i. 196); the sentence of the two Minucii, the delegates of the senate, on a dispute concerning the boundaries between the Genuates and Viturii, 117 B.C. (C.I.L. i. 199; Orel. 3121; Wil. 872); and the epistula of the praetor L. Cornelius (perhaps Sisenna), the praetor of 676 (78 B.C.) ad Tiburtes (C.I.L. i. 201). These belong to the republican age. From the imperial period a great many more have come down to us of varying quality. Some of them are decrees or constitutions of the emperors themselves. Such are the decree of Augustus on the aqueduct of Venafrum (C.I.L. x. 4842; Henz. 6428; Wil. 784); that of Claudius, found in the Val di Nona, belonging to A.D. 46 (C.I.L. v. 5050; Wil. 2842); of Vespasian for Sabora in Spain (C.I.L. ii. 1423), and for the Vanacini in Corsica (Orel. 4031); of Domitian for Falerii (Orel. 3118); the epistles of Hadrian relating to Aezani in Phrygia, added to a Greek decree of Avidius Quietus (C.I.L. iii. 355; Henz. 6955), and relating to Smyrna, in Greek, with a short one of Antoninus Pius, in Latin (C.I.L. iii. 411; Orel. 3119); the decrees of Commodus relating to the saltus Burunitanus in Africa (C.I.L. viii. 10,570; cf. Eph. epigr. v. 471); of Severus and Caracalla for Tyra (Akkerman in Moesia), Latin and Greek (C.I.L. iii. 781; Henz. 6429); of Valerian and Gallienus for Smyrna, also Latin and Greek (C.I.L. iii. 412); of Diocletian de pretiis rerum venalium, containing a long list of prices for all kinds of merchandise, preserved in divers copies more or less complete, in Latin and Greek (C.I.L. iii. 801 sq.; compare Ephem. epigr. iv. 180, and, as similar monuments, the lex portus of Cirta, of A.D. 202 Wil. 2738, and the fragment of a regulation for the importation of wines into Rome, Henz. 5089, Wil. 2739); and some of the age of Constantine, as that relating to Hispellum in Umbria (Henz. 5580; Wil. 2843), that of Julian found at Amorgos (C.I.L. iii. 459; Henz. 6431), and some others, of which copies exist also in the juridical collections. Of two imperial rescripts of a still later age A.D. 413, fragments of the originals, written on papyri, have been found in Egypt (see Mommsen and Jaffé, Jahrbüch des gemeinen deutschen Rechts, vol. vi., 1861, p. 398; Hänel, Corpus legum, p. 281). Imperial decrees, granting divers privileges to soldiers, are the diplomata militaria also, mentioned above, incised on two combined bronze tablets in the form of diptycha (L. Renier, “Recueil de diplômes militaires”; C.I.L. iii. 842 sqq., 1955 sqq.; Wil. 2862-2869), belonging to nearly all emperors from Claudius down to Diocletian. Though not a decree, yet as a publication going back directly to the emperor, and as being preserved in the monumental form, the speech of the emperor Claudius, delivered in the senate, relating to the Roman citizenship of the Gauls, of which Tacitus gives an abstract (Ann. xi. 23), ought also to be mentioned here; it was engraved on large bronze slabs by the public authority of Lugudunum (Lyons), where a large fragment of it is still preserved (Boissieu, Inscriptions antiques de Lyon, p. 132 sq.). Another sort of decrees, relating to a great variety of subjects, has to be mentioned, emanating, not directly from the emperors, but from their functionaries. Such are the decree of the proconsul L. Helvius Agrippa, of the year A.D. 68, on the boundaries of some tribes on the island of Sardinia (C.I.L. x. 7852; Wil. 872 a); that of the prefect of Egypt, Tiberius Julius Alexander, written in Greek, the same year (C. I. Graec. 4957); that of C. Helvidius Priscus, on a similar question relating to Histonium, belonging perhaps to the end of the 1st century (Wil. 873); that of the legate of Trajan, C. Avidius Nigrinus, found at Delphi, in Greek and Latin (C.I.L. iii. 567; Orel. 3671; Wil. 874); a rescript of Claudius Quartinus, perhaps the imperial legate of the Tarraconensis, of the year A.D. 119, found at Pampluna (C.I.L. ii. 2959; Orel. 4032); the epistle of the praefecti praetorio to the magistrates of Saepinum, of about A.D. 166-169 (C.I.L. ix. 2438; Wil. 2841); the decree of L. Novius Rufus, another legate of the Tarraconensis, who ex tilia recitavit, of A.D. 193 (C.I.L. ii. 4125; Orel. 897; Wil. 876); the sentence of Alfenius Senecio, then subprefect of the classis praetoria Misenensis, belonging to the beginning of the 3rd century, formerly existing at Naples (C.I.L. x. 3334); and some others of the 4th and 5th centuries, not requiring specific mention here. Quite a collection of epistles of high Roman functionaries is found in the celebrated inscription of Thorigny (Mommsen, Berichte der sächs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 1852, p. 235 sq.). The letter of a provincial functionary, a priest of Gallia Narbonensis, to the fabri subaediani of Narbonne, of the year 149, may also be mentioned (Henz. 7215; Wil. 696 a). To these must be added the tabulae alimentariae, relating to the well-known provision made by Trajan for the relief of distress among his subjects, such as that of the Ligures Baebiani (C.I.L. ix. 1455; Wil. 2844) and that of Veleia near Parma (Wil. 2845); while evidence of similar institutions is furnished by inscriptions at Tarracina, at Sicca in Africa, and at Hispalis in Spain (Wil. 2846-2848; C.I.L. ii. 1174). At the close of this long list of official documents may be mentioned the libellus of the procurator operum publicorum a columna divi Marci of the year 193 (C.I.L. vi. 1585; Orel. 39; Wil. 2840) and the interlocutiones of the praefecti vigilum on a lawsuit of the fullones of Rome, of A.D. 244, inscribed on an altar of Hercules (C.I.L. vi. 266; Wil. 100). These documents form a most instructive class of instrumenta.
5. Many documents, as may be supposed, were connected with religious worship, public and private. The oldest lex templi, which continued in force until a comparatively late period, was the regulation given by Servius Tullius to the temple of Diana on the Aventine, after the conclusion of the federal pact with the Latini, noticed above. Mention is made of this ancient law as still in force in two later documents of a similar character, viz. the dedication of an altar to Augustus by the plebs of Narbo in southern France, of A.D. 764, but existing only, at Narbonne, in a copy, made perhaps in the 2nd century (C.I.L. xii. 4333; Orel. 2489; Wil. 104), and that of an altar of Jupiter, dedicated at Salonae in Dalmatia in A.D. 137, still existing in part at Padua (C.I.L. iii. 1933; Orel. 2490; Wil. 163). Another lex fani still existing is that of a temple of Jupiter Liber at Furfo, a vicus of southern Italy, of the year 696 (58 B.C.), but copied, in vernacular language, from an older original (C.I.L. i. 603; Orel. 2488; Wil. 105; compare Jordan in Hermes, vol. vii., 1872, pp. 201 sq.). The lists of objects belonging to some sanctuaries or to the ornaments of statues are curious, such as those of the Diana Nemorensis at Nemi (Henz. Hermes, vol. vi., 1871, pp. 8 sq.), and of a statue of Isis in Spain (Hübner, Hermes, vol. i., 1866, pp. 345 sq.; compare C.I.L. ii. 2060, 3386, Orel. 2510, Wil. 210), and two synopses from a temple at Cirta in Africa (Wil. 2736, 2737). The sortes given by divinities may also be mentioned (see C.I.L. i. 267 sq.; Wil. 2822). To a temple also, though in itself of a secular character, belonged a monument of the highest historical importance, viz. the Index rerum a se gestarum, incised on bronze slabs, copies of which Augustus ordered to be placed, in Latin and Greek, where required, in the numerous Augustea erected to himself in company with the Dea Roma. This is known as the Monumentum Ancyranum, because it is at Angora in Asia Minor that the best preserved copy of it, in Greek and Latin, exists; but fragments remain of other copies from other localities (see C.I.L. iii. 779 sq., and the special editions of Mommsen, Berlin, 1865, and Bergk, Göttingen, 1873). Among the inscriptions relating to sacred buildings must also be reckoned the numerous fragments of Roman calendars, or fasti anni Juliani, found at Rome and other places, which have been arranged and fully explained by Mommsen (C.I.L. i., 2nd ed., part ii.; compare for those found in Rome, C.I.L. vi. 2294-2306). Local, provincial or municipal calendaria have likewise been found (as the feriale Cumanum, C.I.L. i. part ii. p. 229, and the Capuanum, C.I.L. x. 3792). Many other large monumental inscriptions bear some relation, more or less strict, to sacred or public buildings. Along with the official calendar exhibited on the walls of the residence of the pontifex maximus, the list of the eponymous magistrates, inscribed by the order of Augustus on large marble slabs, was publicly shown—the fasti consulares, the reconstruction and illustration of which formed the life-work of Borghesi. These have been collected, down to the death of Augustus, by Henzen, and compared with the additional written testimonies, by Mommsen, in the Corpus (vol. i., 2nd ed., part ii.), along with the acta triumphorum and other minor fragments of fasti found in various Italian communities, while the fasti sacerdotum publicorum populi Romani, together with the tabula feriarum Latinarum, are given in the volume devoted exclusively to the monuments of Rome (vol. vi. 441 sq.; compare Hermes, vol. v., 1870, p. 379, and Ephem. epigr. ii. 93, iii. 74, 205 sq.). Documents of the same kind, as, for example, the album ordinis Thamugadensis from Africa (C.I.L. viii. 2403, 17903), and a considerable mass of military lists (latercula, of which those belonging to the garrison of the metropolis are brought together in C.I.L. vi. 651 sq.), are given on many dedicatory and honorary monuments, chiefly from Lambaesis in Africa (C.I.L. viii.). As those documents, though having only a partial claim to be ranked with the sacred ones, derive, like many other dedicatory monuments, their origin and form from that class, so also the protocols (acta), which, from Augustus downwards, seem to have been preserved in the case of all important collegia magistratuum, now survive only from one of the largest and most distinguished collegia sacerdotum, in the acta collegii fratrum Arvalium, to which Marini first drew the attention of epigraphists; they form one of the most important masses of epigraphic monuments preserved to us in the Latin language (see C.I.L. vi. 459 sq., Ephem. epigr. ii. 211 sq., and Henzen’s Acta fratrum Arvalium, Berlin, 1874).
6. Another species of instruments is formed by private documents. They have been incidentally preserved (inserted, for instance, into sepulchral and honorary inscriptions), in the later period not unfrequently in monumental form, as the testaments, given partly or in full, mentioned above (viz. that of Dasumius and the Gaul, C.I.L. vi. 10229, Wil. 314, 315, and some capita testamentorum or codicilli, as that of M. Meconius Leo found at Poetelia—C.I.L. x. 113, 114; Orel. 3677, 3678; Wil. 696), and the donations, such as those of T. Flavius Syntrophus (C.I.L. vi. 10239; Wil. 313), of T. Flavius Artemidorus (Wil. 310), of Statia Irene and Julia Monime (C.I.L. vi. 10231, 10247; Wil. 311, 318). Of a peculiar description is the pactum fiduciae, found in Spain, engraved on a bronze tablet, and belonging, in all probability, to the 1st century (C.I.L. ii. 5042), which seems to be a formulary. Other documents relating to private affairs exist in their original form, written on tabellae ceratae. Those found together in a mining district of Dacia have been arranged and explained by Mommsen and Zangemeister (C.I.L. iii. 291 sq., with facsimiles); those found at Pompeii in 1875, containing receipts of the banker L. Caecilius Jucundus, have been published in C.I.L. iv. (suppl.). These documents are written in cursive letters; and so mostly, too, are some other curious private monuments, belonging partly to the sacred inscriptions—the defixiones (cf. Tac. Ann. ii. 69), imprecations directed against persons suspected of theft or other offences, who, according to a very ancient superstition, were in this way believed to be delivered to punishment through the god to whom the defixio was directed. The numerous Greek and Latin (and even Oscan) examples of this usage have been brought together by Audollent, Defixionum tabellae quotquot innotuerunt tam in Graecis Orientis quam in totius Occidentis partibus praeter Atticas (Paris, 1904); compare C.I.L. i. 818-820, C.I.L. vii. 140). Only a few of them are incised on stone (as that to the Dea Ataecina from Spain, C.I.L. ii. 462); for the most part they are written, in cursive letters, or in very debased capitals, on small bronze or lead tablets (so C.I.L. i. 818, 819; Henz. 6114, 6115; Wil. 2747, 2748), to be laid in the tombs of the “defixi,” or deposited in the sanctuaries of some divinity.
7. Many of the private documents just alluded to have not a monumental character similar to that of the other inscriptions in the wider sense of the word, as they are written on materials not very durable, such as wood and lead—in the majority of cases, in cursive characters; but, nevertheless, they cannot be classed as literature. As a last species, therefore, of instrumenta, there remain some documents, public and private, which similarly lack the strict monumental character, but still are to be reckoned among inscriptions. These are the inscriptions painted or scratched (graffiti) on the walls of the buildings of ancient towns, like Pompeii, where, as was to be expected, most of them have been preserved, those from other ancient cities buried by the eruptions of Vesuvius and from Rome being very small in number. All the various classes of these inscriptions—public and private advertisements, citations for the municipal elections, and private scribblings of the most diverse (and sometimes most indecent) character, one partly collected by Chr. Wordsworth (Inscriptiones Pompeianae, &c., London, 1837, 1846)—are now arranged by Zangemeister in the Corpus, vol. iv. with supplement (some specimens in Wil. 1951 sq.), whence their peculiar palaeographic and epigraphic rules may be learned. And, lastly, as related to some of these advertisements, though widely differing from them in age and character, may be mentioned the so-called diptycha consularia, monuments, in the first instance, of the still very respectable skill in this branch of sculpture to be found at this late period. They are carved-ivory tablets, in the form of pugillaria, and seem to have been invitations to the solemnities connected with the accession of high magistrates, especially to the spectacles of the circus and amphitheatre; for they contain, along with representations of such spectacles, the names, and often the portraits, of high functionaries, mostly of the 5th and 6th centuries. Since Gori’s well-known work on this class of monuments (Thesaurus veterum diptychorum, &c., 3 vols., Florence, 1759) no comprehensive collection of them has been published, but a full list is given by H. de Villefosse in the Gazette Archéologique of 1884; as specimens see C.I.L. ii. 2699, and v. 8120, 1-9.
Bibliography.—As a “Textbook” of Roman epigraphy R. Cagnat, Cours d’épigraphie latine (3rd ed., Paris, 1898, with supplement, 1904) can be heartily recommended. But students must be warned against Zell’s Handbuch der römischen Epigraphik (2 vols., Heidelberg, 1850-1852), an unsatisfactory work which is open to serious criticism. J. C. Egbert’s Introduction to the Study of Latin Inscriptions (1896) is designed for American and English students. For Christian inscriptions Le Blant’s Manuel d’épigraphie chrétienne d’après les marbres de la Gaule (Paris, 1869) may still be consulted with advantage.
(E. Hü.; W. M. L.)