Submitted for award of PhD September 2006. - King's College London

The inscription ST Cp 32 suggests the existence of different meddices: it
mentions the iüvilas of three members of the gens Tanternea, which must be held in
the presence of `any meddix representing the vereia'. 445 The title of this meddix
might be specified in order to distinguish him from the eponymous meddix/meddix
tuticus.
Campanile proposed that the ethnic Campanus, which often appears by the
title, is omissible. 6 If the meddix Pompeianus and the quaestor Pompeianus
referred to the magistrates of Pompeii, it would follow that the meddix Campanus
and the meddix tuticus Campanus meant officials of Capua. He argued that the
passage in Livy `Loesius, who complained that Capua had been abandoned and
betrayed by its leading men, was the last of all the Campanians to receive their
highest magistracy' makes sense if there was only one meddix tuticus for all the
Campani and not both a meddix tuticus and meddix tuticus Campanus. 447
Campanile's argument seems to be correct. It is, however, not possible to explain
why the Campanus qualifying adjective appears only in cases where the name of the
office-holder is omitted.
The cognomen of the beneficiary of the longest terracotta inscription, that of
Trebius Virrius Censorinus, suggests that he had held the office of censor. Given that
the inscription dates from the third century BC, when Capua was allied to the
Romans and was obliged to provide it with a number of soldiers, it is hardly
surprising to find a censor in Capua to take a census of the citizens in order to
establish their military obligations.
aas ST Cp 32 medd(iküm). pis = meddicum quis. Scattered inscriptions link only the office of meddix
to the institution of vereia, not that of the meddix tuticus: See section 4.2.1
446 Campanile-Letts (1979) 23-4.
447
Livy 26.6.17.
126