Imperial Commissioners Again Oliver, James H Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Winter 1976; 17, 4; ProQuest pg. 369

Imperial Commissioners Again 
James H. Oliver 

SINCE the publication of "Imperial Commissioners in Achaia," 
GRBS 14 (1973) 389-405, two more documents attesting an epi­
melete of the city at Athens have come to the author's attention. 

One is the inscription near the bottom of a block, two fragments 
recently joined at the Epigraphical Museum and then published by 
D. Peppa-Delmousou and Khara Karapa, Deltion 27 (1972, in 1976) 

XpovLKa 12, no.8: 

vacat 

[' E]7TLfLEA7JTEVOV[ Toe Tfje 7T6AE] 

[w]e ·r· Movew[vlov 'POVcpov] 

vaeat 

The restoration by the editors is based on IG II2 2472, a catalogue with 
the name MovewvLOe • Poficpoe squeezed in between lines just after the 
title iepevc 'A7T(~AAWVOe A7JAtov, and from InseT. de Delos 2538, in which 
C. Musonius Rufus is mentioned as lifelong priest of the Delian Apollo 
and epimelete of holy Delos under Antoninus Pius. He is not the only 
Musonius, but Mrs Peppa-Delmousou and Miss Karapa are, I think, 
right in restoring the cognomen 'Povcpov and the phrase TfjC 7T()AEWC. 

As the editors point out, this restoration would imply that the office 
of the epimelete of the city continued after the Hadrianic reform of 
the Athenian constitution. In my original article I noted that in the 
first century after Christ prominent men served as epimelete and 
men of less distinction did so under Hadrian, and then none at all 
seemed to postdate Hadrian. Now C. Musonius Rufus, epimelete of 
the city under Antoninus Pius, shows that the office did continue and 
with distinguished incumbents after Hadrian. 

Accordingly, another document may be claimed as an even later 
a ttestation of an epimelete of the city at Athens, namely IG II2 3405 
Hfor the victory and health of the godlike and brother-loving emperors 
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Aurelius Verus." At the bot­
tom of the inscription is the note: 

369 



370 IMPERIAL COMMISSIONERS AGAIN 

10 €1TL/L£A'Y/T£VOVTOC rvatov ,AUctV ~ 

"A AT' '. VLOV T'TLKOV .J. apyrJTTtoV J 

The family was a distinguished one well known from the catalogues 
of paeanistae (TAPA 71 [1940] 302-10, and M. Woloch, Roman Citizen­
ship and the Athenian Elite, A.D. 96-161 [Amsterdam 1973] 62-67). 

In the original article we compared the rise of the imperial correc­
to res with the decline of the epimeleteia of the city. We noted that the 
Trajanic-Hadrianic correctores were not, as far as our scanty evidence 
permits us to say, continued by Antoninus Pius, but that a new period 
began with the appointment of the Quintilii as interim consular 
governors of both the free cities and the old province. Since we 
recognize a correlation between the rise of imperial correctores and the 
decline of epimeletae of the city, it is easy to accept prominent epi­
meletae after Hadrian and before the Quintilii. At the present state of 
our evidence Antoninus Pius and the dil'i fratres, by their abstention 
from appointing correctores, seem to have allowed the epimeleteia to 
recover its previous importance, but with the arrival of the Quintilii 
it probably fell once again into a more permanent decline. 

BALTIMORE 

August, 1976