The Fasti Antiates Ministrorum Domus Augustae, a large inscription associated with the imperial villa at Antium, is best known for its iteration of the Augustan calendar. In this article, I reassess the fasti in their entirety, focusing on their manner of display and social function. I place special emphasis on the section of the inscription, largely overlooked, that contains the annual records of magistrates who led the voluntary association that commissioned the inscription, a detailed record of two decades of local history. The association revealed in these records worked to bestow honors on its members, offering them prestige within and beyond the household, and also acted to censure them. Because the fasti identify most magistrates by job title, they also provide invaluable information about the villa’s workforce, composed of enslaved people and freedmen; the document provides a valuable counterpoint to other testimonia for occupations, largely funerary. Manual laborers and domestics appear with greater frequency in the fasti than they do in occupational inscriptions from funerary contexts, while administrators, abundant in funerary contexts, form a minority. Importantly, the magistrates’ list reveals that the association was a group in which the “sub-clerical grades” of imperial slaves and freedmen could accrue prestige and wield authority as readily as their overseers. In the community reflected in the fasti, power derived not from job status within a workplace hierarchy, but from social standing among peers—acquired and maintained (or lost) over decades of service.
Working for the Emperor at Antium: Profession and Prestige in the Fasti Antiates Ministrorum Domus Augustae
An early version of this paper was presented at the Third Annual Symposium Campanum held at the Villa Vergiliana in October 2018. The article has benefited from many discussions with colleagues, especially Rebecca Benefiel, Peg Laird, Brenda Longfellow, Jessica Stephens, and Karen Stern. I also gratefully acknowledge the anonymous reviewer for Classical Antiquity, whose comments were both insightful and constructive, and Mario Telò, Sarah Culpepper Stroup, and the team at Classical Antiquity. Erin Daly of the University of Iowa provided assistance with figure 3.
Molly Swetnam-Burland; Working for the Emperor at Antium: Profession and Prestige in the Fasti Antiates Ministrorum Domus Augustae. Classical Antiquity 1 April 2024; 43 (1): 124–166. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ca.2024.43.1.124
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