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

Pompeianus and guaestor Pompeianus. 708 Beloch's view that the meddix tuticus was a
federal magistrate has since been criticised by many scholars. The aim of this section is
to re-evaluate the evidence for the public offices attested at Pompeii in inscriptions, and
to investigate whether any of them could have had more than a local competence.
One of the basic problems of dealing with the Oscan inscriptions of Pompeii is that
most of them have been removed from their original context. Sometimes this happened
in antiquity following the foundation of the Sullan colony when some stones with Oscan
inscriptions on them were reused as building material. Inscriptions found in private
houses are particularly good examples of this, which can be seen as an attempt by a
member of a family to preserve the inscriptions set up by an ancestor or as antiquarian
curiosity. In modern times, the majority of Oscan inscriptions found during the
eighteenth century were taken to the Archaeological Museum of Naples without their
place of origin being satisfactorily recorded. Once the town was excavated, many
painted inscriptions faded from the walls due to contact with daylight and weathering.
There are several inscriptions that Zvetaieff and Mommsen could read but which had
already disappeared by the time Conway undertook his work.
Because of the lack of historical and certain archaeological contexts it is difficult
to date the Pompeian inscriptions. Campania came under Samnite rule in the second half
of the fifth century BC. It seems reasonable to suppose that around that time Oscan-
speaking inhabitants also settled in the southern parts of the Bay of Naples. As we have
seen, Livy refers to Pompeii for the first time in 310 BC. It is plausible that by this
period the political structure of the settlement was Samnite, although there is no literary
evidence. After 89 BC the official language became Latin. In 80 BC, the Samnite
administration was abolished with the foundation of the Colonia Cornelia Veneria
708
Beloch (1877) 295.
204