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

The main source of information for the period after 211 BC is a group of
twenty-eight inscriptions, often referred to as the `magistri' inscriptions. 498 They
have been dated to the period between 112 and 71 BC, and presumably reflect the
administrative system in place some time after 211 BC. The texts mostly record
building and restoration works executed in the city and territory of Capua. They
mention boards of magistri, identified by the names of deities, which must
have been
linked to local sanctuaries: magistri of Spes, Fides, Fortuna, Venus lovia, Ceres,
Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Jupiter Compages, Castor and Pollux and Mercurius. It
has been concluded that these magistrates were the curators of local shrines, who
superintended the building activities connected to these sanctuaries and put on games
and festivals related to their deity. 499 An alternative view that the magistri were
representatives of wider professional associations has been rejected. 50° Scholars have
also noticed that a great number of duties, which in a municipium or colony fell to
the ordinary magistrates, were assumed by these boards of magistri in Capua.
Two inscriptions are particularly relevant here because they mention decisions
of a pagus. The more widely studied inscription is a decree of the pagus
Herculaneus. 501
It records the activities of a board of magistri of Jupiter Compages,
who were ordered to spend a certain amount of money on the restoration of the
portico of the local theatre in accordance with a decision of the pagus, at the
discretion of the magister pagi. The officials were . granted honorary seating in the
theatre as though they had put on games. The decree is followed by the names of
twelve members of the board. The other inscription provides us with a list of the
498
The twenty-eight inscriptions were gathered and published by Frederiksen (1959) appendix and
(1984) 281-4. Frederiksen's reference numbers will be used here.
499
The idea was put forward by Mommsen in CIL X 367 and still prevails, it was accepted by
Frederiksen (1959) 85-88 and Pobjoy (1998) 182.
500 For the debate, see Frederiksen (1959) 85 and 86.
501 Nr. 17= CIL I2 682 = CIL X 3772 = ILS 6302 = ILLRP 719.
140