Sale: Triton VII, Lot: 979. Estimate $5000.  Closing Date: Monday, 12 January 2004.  Sold For $6000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ANTONINUS PIUS. 138-161 AD. Æ Military Diploma (two restored 128 x 94mm tablets; 77 gm and 85 gm). Dated 27 September 154 AD. Both tablets, broken into several pieces, have been professionally restored, with the loss of approximately 20% due to missing pieces. Almost the entire text can be reconstructed through the combined reading of the identical interior and exterior inscriptions. Attractive, mottled red and green patina. An apparently unknown and unpublished constitution. ($5000)

This diploma is the copy presented to a cavalryman of the ala I praetoria singularium civium Romanorum, whose unit was stationed near Teutoburgium on the Danube, on his discharge (missio) from the legions after serving for an average of 25 years. In addition, grants to 5 alae and 13 cohorts, each of which is listed, as well as to sailors of the Pannonian Danube fleet, are included in the document. Each veteran is granted Roman citizenship and the right to contract a Roman marriage with one wife. The discharge gives the names the provincial governor, the two consuls for the year, and the prefect of the ala praetoria, as well as the seven witnesses. As was customary in such documents, the outer text is repeats that of the interior, thus making a reconstruction of the whole possible. The two central holes present served to seal the two tablets together. The original of the diploma was sent to Rome to be affixed to one of the temples there. Originally, the designated temple was that of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, but by the second century AD other shrines were used. For this diploma, it was is the Temple of Divus Augustus, whose specific location is otherwise unknown, in the vicinity of the Temple of Minerva.

We gratefully acknowledge the collaboration of Professor Dr. Peter Weiss, who provided assistance in the cataloguing of this diploma.