According to Dr. Linda A. Malcor and John Matthews in their new book ARTORIUS: THE REAL KING ARTHUR, the dates for L. Artorius Castus in Britain and Liburnia run as follows:
181 Praefectus of the VI Victrix twice. ["twice" is wrong; all professional epigraphers agree that if two terms were to be expressed on the stone, PRAEFF will not bear the interpretation of 'prefect twice': some phrase like praefectus iterum or bis praefectus would have been used for a second command with the same title. As Professor Roger Tomlin stated, "I am happy with the traditional interpretation that FF is a stonecutter's mistake, like his IM for IN in Britanicianarum."]
187 Becomes Dux of the three legions of Britannia [another error; vexillations is implied here, as it is on 42 other stones (see Robert Saxer)]
191 Procurator Centenarius of Liburnia.
According to Malcor, Castus either died or was mortally wounded in the war between Septimius Severus and Albinus in Gaul, in the year 197, to be precise. She believes the stone could have been commissioned before he left for the war.
We may keep this date only because it is relevant to our treatment of the age of the stone below. But the idea, proposed by Malcor and Matthews, that Castus left his procuratorship to fight in the civil war only to be mortally wounded or killed at Lugdunum is pure fancy. There is no evidence to even suggest such a conjecture. The reason for placing him at Lugdunum is so they can associate him with the Burgundy Avallon previously associated with Riothamus by Geoffrey Ashe.
While the date itself of just prior to 197 is credible, Tomlin holds that "If VIVUS is to be taken literally, Castus' epitaph was composed by him in retirement, which could be as late as c. 180." This fits with the rough schema provided by Miletic:
Proposed Approximate Timeline of the Career of Lucius Artorius Castus (from Zeljko Miletic's "Lucius Artorius Castus and Liburnia"):
fifty years of service at the age of about 70 podines retired to the peace of his estate,
outlived the province.
dies natalis c. 104
miles 121-135
centurio legionis III Gallicae 135-138
centurio legionis VI Ferratae 139-142
centurio legionis II Adiutricis 143-146
centurio legionis V Macedonicae 147-150
primus pilus legionis V Macedonicae 151
praepositus classis Misenatium 152-154
praefectus castrorum legionis VI Victricis 155-162
dux legionariorum et auxiliorum Britannicorum adversus
Armenians
162-166
procurator centenarius provinciae Liburniae 167-174
Of course, we may also opt for ARMORICOS for the Castus memorial stone - something that I myself eventually settled upon. This would push the date of the stone up slightly, with Castus being given the procuratorship of Liburnia by Cleander, Perennis' successor, in 185 or immediately after.
Opponents of the earlier date argue that to have a man around 70 years old is absurd, but this did happen in the Roman Empire. These same opponents usually cite the average lifespan of a Roman soldier, but such an average includes the obvious fact that many soldiers died in service. If a man survived his war years, he could certainly have lived longer - even much longer - than the average lifespan of a soldier.
The consensus on the age of the stone strictly from the standpoint of the style of carving and art is that it belongs to the 2nd century, i.e. to the Antonine. There are a few scholars who will permit it to go beyond that into the very early Severan - but by far the majority prefer Antonine, and among those the late Antonine (defined roughly as the last quarter of the 2nd century).
I have taken the trouble, once again, to contact experts in the fields of Roman art history and Roman funeral art and have asked them what they thought about the date of the stone. I have added their responses below, and then pasted below their responses those I had garnished from other scholars in the past. Note that this is NOT a selective list. There were, of course, plenty of scholars who did not respond to my query, and others who were either noncommital or who referred me to colleagues they felt were better equipped to deal with the problem. I received no dissenting opinions, i.e. educated guesses which put the stone well outside either the second or third centuries. No one would put the stone as late as, say, Diocletian.
"I've had a look at the photo and my instinct is that this is later second, rather than early third-century work. But it's only a personal sense, and, as I said before, it is notoriously difficult to distinguish Severan from later Antonine architectural ornament."
Dr Susan Walker FSA*
Honorary Curator and former Keeper of Antiquities, Ashmolean Museum
Emerita Fellow, Wolfson College, University of Oxford
*Wife of John Wilkes, Emeritus Professor of Greek and Roman Archaeology at University College London. Wilkes told me via personal communication that "In 1962, in company with my old friend Tony Birley, I travelled from Split a few miles south along the coast where we located the two halves of the text still incorporated in the roadside field wall at Podstrana di Jesenice. The part of the stone with the key letters ARM[...] was buried but we managed to excavate it from the grass verge and confirm that there were no traces of further letters to be seen."
"It wouldn’t be earlier than the second century, I don’t think, and it could go into the third. In my opinion, the quality of the letters makes a date later than that range improbable. One way to go might be to consider the type of monument it belonged to. If it was a chamber tomb and this was the titulus set into the façade that would make a second-century date more likely, or early third."
Regina Gee, Ph.D.
Professor of Art History
CAA Leadership Fellow in the School of Art
Montana State University
"Really I cannot say how to decipher the letters ARM, but according to the type of sarcophagus it is quite sure that it belongs to the end of the 2nd or the very beginning of the 3rd century AD. It is the vertical strigili type and the pelte tabulla made of Proconnesian marble. This type of the sarcophagi was imported but finally done in Salona which was the port of import of such blocks and the workshop or workshops. This sarcophagus was pretty huge and expensive."
Prof. Dr. Sc. Nenad Cambi
"Dating from style of details like this is notoriously inexact and unreliable, especially in the provincial context. If I saw this for the first time and was guessing a date from the style of carving and the figural decoration alone, ignoring any other factors, I would say it's very nice and I would hesitate to out it a lot later than 200. But this really is an informed guess. A way to explore this aspect further would be to look for very similar elements in the decoration of Dalmatia stones and see if any of them have more secure dating criteria. However, even that would not be especially dependable.
If it were in the city of Roman then certain technical details and stylistic traits might help to narrow it but the tools don’t change, even though there is a growing casualness of drill use through the period (not conspicuous in this work, in fact), and the motifs are rooted in the early empire. I am perfectly happy for it to be Antonine, but if I didn’t know anything about it and was told it was Flavian I would not be perturbed. Actually it’s the letter carving that’s potentially more illuminating, but in this case that seems to rather argue earlier, not late.
Without commenting on the historical arguments, which I haven’t looked into, but just considering whether on art-historical grounds the stone could have been carved in the last 30 years of the second century: yes, I have no problem with that."
Professor Peter Stewart
Professor of Ancient Art
Director of the Classical Art Research Centre
Fellow, Wolfson College
Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies
"I think I'd incline to a 2nd C date."
Professor Zahra Newby
Department of Classics and Ancient History
University of Warwick
"As you know, the inscription was already published in 1873. Based on the text, i.e. cursus honorum, it is dated to the years 180-230. For my part, I can add that the style is typical of the late Antonines, but it could have been continued under Severus. Likewise the lettering."
Prof. dr hab. Piotr Karol Dyczek
"The best comparison I can find is in Diana Kleiner's 1992 book on Roman Sculpture. p. 336, fig. 301, illustrates one panel of the Roman Arch of the Argentarii of A.D. 204. Made of travertine it seems to be a finer stone than the one you have. The side border has rosettes (floral patterns with 4 leaves) set between spiraling acanthus plants. The border pattern on your stone seems to have a simplified version of the same design. Based on this comparison, I would say you are in the ballpark for an Antonine date in the last quarter of the 2nd century."
Professor Mary C. Sturgeon
"I would go with Tomlin and Birley on the date (earlier, rather than later)."
Prof. Maureen Carroll, FSA
Professor of Roman Archaeology
Director MA Roman Archaeology
Department of Archaeology
University of York
* Older opinions, gathered a few years ago:
It has further been objected that the LAC memorial stone must be from 190. This is insisted upon for stylistic considerations. However, in Tomlin's treatment of the stone, he says:
"The inscription is undated, but the quality of the lettering and the well-executed band of lush orna- ment to left and right, twining scrolls inhabited by rosettes, would suggest it was Antonine (c. AD 140–90)."
When I asked him to elaborate on that published statement, he sent the following via private correspondence:
"I don't much like dating closely on ground of style, since it is unusual to get many closely dated inscriptions from which to conclude that such-and-such a letter form or ornament must belong to that narrow date-band. So yes, I see no reason to date the stone to 190. I am quite happy for it to be earlier; indeed, I would expect it to be so."
Of the several renowned Roman art scholars I have consulted on this question, the consensus is that the LAC memorial stone belongs to the Antonine period, but that it can’t be more precisely dated than that. Here is a representative selection of their responses:
"Roger [Tomlin] has solved this. A pity I didn't see his book [ BRITANNIA ROMANA ROMAN INSCRIPTIONS AND ROMAN BRITAIN, 2018] before I wrote my article ("Viri militares...")."
- Anthony Birley on the ARM- of the LAC inscription as Armenia of the 160s
"Style of lettering and orthographic peculiarities can often provide a close dating. All I can say, and it is by no means definitive, is that the decorative framing motif is unlikely to be as late as 190 because it does not feature the deep carving and prominent use of the drill (vs. chisel) characteristic of that period. By the same criterion, the inscription may not even be as late as Antonine, because that is when that kind of carving/drilling begins. I'm attaching an inscription precisely dated to 161. I say "not definitive" because one has to take into consideration qualitative differences between master carvers and routine work. Nonetheless, on the basis of carving, your inscriptions are unlikely to be 190 but they also may be pre-Antonine."
- FRED S. KLEINER, Professor of History of Art & Architecture, Professor of Archaeology, Boston University
"One thing I can definitively tell you: none of the ornaments around the inscriptions can be dated within a timespan as short as 10 years. Both the type of ornament (i.e. the motifs) and the style of depiction (i.e. the way they are carved) are conventional over long periods of time. While style is a very difficult criterion to apply due to the fact that styles vary a lot at any given time depending on the workshop and/or quality of work, I would probably feel fairly confident to date both items (the stamp is impossible to date on any ‘artistic’ grounds) to the second half of the second to early third century. I would not hesitate to date the sarcophagus fragment even more precisely to the mid-Antonine to Severan period or to c. 160/70-220/30 roughly speaking. Yet any more precise dating on the basis of the ornaments would not be methodologically sound."
- Professor Barbara Borg (https://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/classics/staff/borg/)
"The very nice scrollwork and flowers look high Antonine, nearer the middle of the 2nd century I would have thought. Yes, I would say on the basis of the ornament and relative lack of ligatures in the inscription it is round about the mid century."
- Professor Martin Henwig (https://www.classics.ox.ac.uk/people/revd.professor-martin-henig)
“I've now had a chance to look at the objects in question. I fully trust Roger's [Tomlin] verdict with regard to the dating of the inscription and the carving of the letters. Generally speaking, it certainly looks firmly 2nd century to me. As for the vegetal decoration, I would equally say that the shape of the flowers and tendril ornament do not support a date later than, roughly, the mid-2nd century AD (which includes the 160s). Although the pieces come from a provincial context, the ornament does not show any of the characteristics which we would expect for the Severan and later periods (i.e. a lot of drill-work and sharp contours).”
- Dominik Maschek (https://www.classics.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-dominik-maschek)
"I can assure you that Professor Roger Tomlin, whose work I know well, is a great authority on matters concerning Roman army and administration (as well as onomastics), so you can absolutely rely on his opinions and I would agree with what he told you. I can assure you that no Roman inscription can be dated 'precisely', unless it contains a dating by consuls or an exact imperial titulature."
- Marjeta Sasel Kos (https://iza2.zrc-sazu.si/en/sodelavci/marjeta-sasel-kos-en#v)
"As to the decorative carvings on the major [LAC] stone, not much can really be said. There are those who think you can date these things precisely – but I’m not among them. They’re too often standard workshop products, and the designs don’t change that much or that often. Twenty or thirty years doesn’t seem to make much of a difference, as best I can tell. However, the eastern [Armenian] campaign outlined by Tomlin seems to me preferable to a British conjecture."
- Professor Michael Koortbojian
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