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

since the programmata were not notices put up by officials, it is just possible that the
inscriptions date from the time of the early colony.
The period between the Roman occupation and the establishment of the colony is
the most controversial and the most extensively discussed in the history of the town.
Historical research has focused on questions of the constitution and the administrative
institutions. It has been argued that the appearance of the quattuorvirate both in Oscan
electoral inscriptions and Latin inscriptions on stone suggests that after the occupation of
the town, Pompeii became a municipium. Rudolph thought that Pompeii was granted
Roman citizenship by Cinna in 87 BC or at least at some point between 89 and 80 BC 768
Mouritsen has pointed out that none of the Latin electoral inscriptions mention the
quattuorvirate, which he explains by the fact that it was not by then an office in itself
but a collective term for the duoviri and aediles 769 The names of several candidates in
the programmata antiquissima appear to be Oscan, which would raise the question of
why some appealed to the voters in Latin and others in Oscan. Mouritsen argued that
they were probably not part of the same electoral campaign. He concluded that the
candidates in the Oscan electoral inscriptions were running for the quattuorviral
magistracy, established after the Social War and that they were painted in the
transitional period, that is 89-80 BC, while the Latin programmata antiquissima formed
part of electoral campaigns held in the early colony, from 80 BC onwards, after Pompeii
received a regular colonial constitution with duoviri and two aediles, who formed the
college of quattuorviri. 770
A study of the administrative institutions of Oscan Pompeii must also include
several pieces of evidence in Latin. The body of Latin electoral inscriptions from
768
Rudolph (1935) 151 - 52
769 Mouritsen (1988) 72 and 85.
230