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

institutions from the Sarno region. The arrangements of Cirta were probably based on
Roman models and cannot be used to argue for a confederation organization in the
region of the river Sarno.
Of the members of the supposed Nucerian league, Pompeii provides us with the
largest amount of epigraphic evidence for the Samnite period. We have attestations of a
meddix tuticus, meddix and meddix pompeianus. The dipinto on the fragment of an
amphora suggest that the office of meddix was used for dating, which suggests that it
was annual, eponymous and probably identical with the office of meddix tuticus. It has
been argued that the ethnic does not make a difference to the title, which makes it
probable that the office of meddix Pompeiianus was identical to that of meddix luticus.
Thus it follows that the office of meddix tuticus was a local one at Pompeii and not a
federal. We also have evidence for lower rank officers at Pompeii: pairs of aediles and
guaestores are attested. They both appear to have been local magistrates. From what we
can know about the functions of the aediles, it seems that they had similar
responsibilities to the aediles of Rome, whence the name of the office derives. The
quaestors saw to the collection of public money, often from fines, and its spending on
building programmes according to the advice of the councils. This makes their function
similar to those of the meddices degetasii of Nola and the aediles at Rome. We also have
evidence for the existence of two councils at Pompeii, the kümbenniefs (gen. sing. ) and
[kü]mparakineis (gen. sing. ). On the analogy of other Campanian and southern Italian
Greek cities it is probable that one of them was the senate and the other the general
assembly, but that is all we can infer from the names. Both councils were involved in
dealing with public money which in Rome was normally the function of the senate. A
study of the gees names of the meddices tutici and other magistrates suggests that in the
Samnite period the magistracies were not restricted to a small number of families, and
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