Dr. Konrad Stauner on Armatas Gentes and the L. Artorius Castus Inscription

    The Author with the Castus Stone

I've asked Dr. Konrad Stauner for his opinion on the age of the L. Artorius Castus inscription. Included in my query were the conventionally accepted lacuna readings ARMORICOS and ARMENIOS, as well as my newly proposed reading ARM(ATAS) GENTES. His response (unedited) is as follows:

Dear Mr. Hunt:

I was already familiar with the LUPA images, and I do not believe that the letter forms can be used to narrow down the date of the inscription any further. Since the Marcomannic Wars, the title of dux has increasingly been used for vexillation commanders. In my opinion, the civil war period following the death of Commodus can be ruled out, as I consider it unlikely that troops from Britain were sent to the east at that time (with Clodius Albinus as pretender to the throne). I suspect that it was a later deployment under Severus or Caracalla.

The reading ARMATAS GENTES or ARMGENTES sounds tempting, but the problem is that there is no parallel for it. It would be nice to be able to support this hypothesis with comparable wording in other inscriptions. Of course, there cannot be a reference to every expression in another inscription. In fact, it seems that neither ARMORICOS nor ARMENIOS have comparanda.

If GENTES is correct, then this formulation could indicate that not just one tribe was in revolt, but several, and that the writer of the inscription therefore refers to them collectively as gentes (perhaps also because he did not know their names).

I suspect that the ‘adversus’ task refers to a special mission, perhaps like that of Caius Julius Septimius Castinus or Claudius Candidus (EDCS-05503146), but this does not necessarily have to have been in the north of Britain, although that is entirely possible. 

The more I think about it, the less convincing I find Armenios, not to mention Armoricos. The fact that the inscription explicitly states that Artorius was commander of three BRITISH legions may be an indirect indication of where this expeditionary force was deployed, namely in a regional theatre of war (to the north of Hadrian’s Wall).

Be that as it may, ARMATAS GENTES is certainly an interesting new reconstruction of the gap.

[When I asked him in a separate query if it were true that the abbreviations PRAEFF and LEGG in the Castus inscription were Severan innovations, he replied as follows:]

Yes, it seems so.

Dr. Konrad Stauner

Lehrgebiet Geschichte und Gegenwart Alteuropas

Historisches Institut der Fernuniversität

Universitätsstr. 33 (KSW)

D-58084 Hagen

https://www.fernuni-hagen.de/geschichte/lg1/team/konrad.stauner.shtml