Details

LOT 0099

Large Roman Inked Wooden Sales Contract Tablet for Land Bought by a Pomponius Valerianus

EARLY 4TH CENTURY AD

10 1/2 x 6" (79 grams, 26.5 x 15.5cm).

A large wood tabula fragment with three holes to the sulcius to accept binding strips: Side A featuring a recessed panel incised with cursive text following the grain of the wood; Side B with approximately twenty-five lines of inked cursive text running against the grain of the wood, also nine lines of inked cursive text following the grain; the text comprises of legal formulae and the description of land bought by a Pomponius Valerianus: 'Pomponius Valerianus emit ex culturis agribusque Iulii Cassiani in fundo Thalciano sitis ... - Pomponius Valerianus buys from the cultivated land of Iulius Cassianus on the fundus Thalcianus ... what follows is the description of the land by giving the names of neighboring proprietors or ways.', the contract is dated to the 4th February of an unknown year approximately in the first decades of the 4th century, separated from the text the signatures of the witnesses.

Provenance

Ex Monsieur Alain Sfez collection, Belgium; acquired by gift from his father Albert Sfez, 1965; acquired by Albert in the early 1950s; accompanied by two old black and white photographs.

Published

See Rothenhoefer, P., Neue römische Rechtsdokumente aus dem Byzacena-Archiv / New Roman Legal Documents from the Byzacena Archive, (forthcoming).

Literature

For examples of wooden tabulae re-used as writing surfaces, see Thomas, J. D., Vindolanda: The Latin Writing Tablets, Britannia Monograph Series No 4, London, 1983; for examples of testamentary documents on wooden tablets that have survived, see FIRA III, p.47 for Anthony Silvanus from 142 AD and see BGU VII 1695 for Safinnius Herminus; for another from Transfynydd, North Wales, see Arch. Camb. 150, pp.143-156.

Footnotes

Wooden tablets were used as administrative documents (contracts, testament, etc.) by civil and military clerks, or simply for correspondence. The contract followed standard Roman legal formulae. Our wooden wax tablets (tabula cerata) were as usual used many times (e.g. the Bloomberg tablets from Roman London), and shows traces of repeated use.

CONDITION