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

is more plausible that the coins were minted for the payment of troops or building
programmes within the town.
In inscriptions, Nola appears to have had a pair of meddices degetasii, Abella one
or more quaestor. The Nolan magistrates are recorded dedicating buildings paid for with
money from public fines, and defining the extent of public or sacred land. The quaestor
of Abella also appears demarcating public land. Although the functions of the quaestor
of Abella and meddices degetasii appear to have been similar, what we know about these
offices is by no means the whole picture.
The fact that quaestors appear both in Abella and Pompeii does not mean that their
functions were identical. It has been suggested that the appearance of quaestors in these
towns is a sign of progressive Romanization or of their interest in integration into the
Roman state. 656 The office of meddix degetasius may have been an older Oscan title for
an office which also had financial functions. The same or similar tasks may have been
carried out by magistrates with different titles in different communities: the meddices
degetasii of Nola, the quaestores of Pompeii and the aediles of Rome were all
responsible for the levying of fines and for making dedications from these fines. Both
the meddices degetasii and the quaestor of Abella were involved in the definition of
public lands, whereas at Pompeii aediles are attested demarcating roads. This
phenomenon of giving different names to the same or similar offices is also known from
Greece, where the names of the magistrates differed from city to city. Contrary to ideas
of an overarching Italic constitution, it seems that the specification and titolature of
offices in Italic states was often a question of local preference.
The Cippus Abellanus reveals that both Nola and Abella had their own councils, a
senate, which instructed or gave advice to the magistrates and legates of these two
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