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

pürtam. liis[eis az2 pü]d safinim. sak[arat inim 3ur]upar. iak. üin[itü.
tüvtü4in]im. keenstur [uupsen5m]aiieis. maraiieis [eitiuvad 6p]aam. essuf.
ümbn[ited. dilei 7a]vt. püstiris. esidu[m. dunneis] 8duunated. fiis[nai-----(-)
9]nim. leigüss. samid[------ (-)10 -]üvfrikünüss. fifliked]
The door of the ills- by which Samnium shrine(? ) and (... )upam the üin-
tuvtu? and the censor [built] (.... ) of Maius Maraeus which he himself made,
but later the same gave as a gift to the temple, he provided
.... (... ) ...
This fragmentary cippus comes from temple A at Pietrabbondante276 The office of
censor is not attested elsewhere in Samnium, but it appears in the territory of the
Frentani and in the Roman influenced Tabula Bantina among the Lucani. It is a
generally held opinion that the Samnites adopted the title from Rome. 277 At Rome
censors took the census, registered the property of citizens and arranged state
contracts. 278 The text here is too lacunose to be certain what the censor had done at
Pietrabbondante. Vetter thought that he had administered collection of money needed
to build temple A, but there is no evidence to confirm this.
The epigraphic evidence suggests that the Pentri did not have indigenous
names for offices other than meddix tuticus, but borrowed Roman terms for them.
This might imply that these other offices were new creations, adopted and perhaps
adapted from the system of Rome and its colonies. But the attestations are so few,
and all from a later period of alliance with Rome, that we cannot be sure whether
these were older offices given new names.
276 Rix suggests that Maius Maraeus built something at his own expense, and later donated it to the
temple: Rix (1993) 345. He might have been an earlier magistrate, perhaps meddix tuticus.
277 Watmough (1995/6) 94-6. Camporeale however argues that the office was originally Italic:
Camporeale (1956) 75-6.
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