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

6.3.5. Other institutions
It is also important to look at the functions of the councils of Pompeii, the kümbennieis
(gen. sing. ) and [kü]mparakineis (gen. sing). 735 The first council is attested three times
in inscriptions, the second only once, although it is important to note that the beginning
of the word has been emended and it is not entirely certain that it begins with kü-. 736 The
function of these councils in inscriptions is to authorise the spending of public money on
building projects in Pompeii: the kümbennieis commissioned the construction of a house
for the vereiia, the making of a sundial for the Thermae Stabianae and the pavement of
the temple of Apollo. 737 Single quaestors, where we have relatively complete
inscriptions, usually appear with the mention of one or the other council, with one
exception (ST Po 8).
Devoto argued that kümbennieis (gen. sing. ) was a kind of popular assembly,
where `one goes' and would thus be rendered in Latin as conventus.
738 Sartori pointed
out etymological similarities with the comono of the Bantia Tablets and the kumne of the
Iguvine Tablets. 739 Devoto further argues that künzparakineis was a board to which
people were `asked' to go, since it is etymologically related to the same root from which
Latin posco and precor derive and, according to Devoto, it probably meant the senate.
Salmon strongly opposed this idea, suggesting that both words, kümbennieis and
735 1 am concerned only with the relationship of the councils to the magistrates of Pompeii here, rather than
the etymology or the duties of the boards.
736 I do not count those attempts to reconstruct the texts, where a part of the stone is missing and the
scholars tried to guess the number of the letters. For example in ST Po 10 Rix inserts kümbennieis,
whereas Vetter prefers kümparakineis; for the extremely fragmentary ST Po 13 see Rix's reconstruction.
737
In ST Po 9 we are not told what the council ordered the quaestor to commission. We do not have exact
archaeological records where the inscription was found exactly, which might have given us some
information about the officer commissioned.
738
Devoto (1931) 222.
739
Sartori (1953) 71; ST Lu 1; ST Um 1 lb. 41.
218