Tabula clesiana
The Tabula clesiana is a bronze plate size cm. 49.9 x 37.8 x 0.61, discovered in 1869 at Campi Neri near Cles in Trentino, northern Italy. It contains the edict of the Caesar Claudius of 46 AD which granted the Roman citizenship to the Alpine peoples of the Anauni, Sinduni and Tulliasses.
The Tabula is conserved at the Castello del Buonconsiglio Museum in Trento.
Significance
The Tabula is an important evidence of the rapid assimilation by the Roman world of the Alpine peoples of farmers-hunters but also from the point of view of the Roman law the first evidence of the introduction of delatores in the fiscal controversy.[1]
The name of the Bergaleos has been connected with the name of Val Bregaglia.[2]
Translation
"During the consulship of Marcus Junius Silanus and Quintus Sulpicius Camerinus, on the Ides of March, in Baia, in the judgment hall, it was affixed the edict of Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus which is transcribed below. Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, Pontifex Maximus, during his sixth tribunate, after his eleventh acclamation as Emperor, father of the country, appointed consul for the fourth time, says: Because, among the oldest disputes in progress since the time of my uncle Tiberius Caesar, for resolution of which - in my memory, only those that existed between Comensi and Bergalei - he had sent Pinariius Apollinaris, and since he, as a first step for the stubborn absence of my uncle, later also under the principality of Gaius, he neglected - certainly not a fool - to produce a report on what was bot required; and since then Camurius Statutus notified me that the land and the forests are for the most part of my personal property: I sent to the scene Julius Planta, my friend and companion, who called my attorneys - both those who were in the other region, both those in the area - with the utmost precision conducted the inquiry and instructed the question; for all other matters, I delegate to him to settle and to decide, according to me the solutions proposed in the report which he produced. As for the condition of Anauni, of Sinduni and Tulliassi, a portion of which it is said that the complaint has found to be attributed to the Tridentini, some even attributed, although I realize that this category of people has not based their Roman citizenship on a sufficiently well-founded source, however, since it is said that they have been owned for a long period of use, and that you are so fused with Tridentini by not being able to be separated without serious damage to the beautiful town hall, it allows for my claim they continue to be in legal status who they thought they had, and the more so because several of their condition is said to pay service even in my judgment hall, and some even have been officers of the troops, and that some people included in decurie in Rome will do the judges. Their agreement this benefit, with the result that they have entered into any store or any legal proceedings have taken as if they were Roman citizens, or among themselves, or with Tridentini or other, I order that is ratified; and the names of Roman citizens who had taken earlier, they give them to keep them."[3]
Notes
- Spagnuolo Vigorita, 1984: delatorial trial. legal controversy on the patrimonium principis and the status personae.
- E. Dubois in Revue de législation ancienne et moderne française et étrangère (1872), p. 28 (c.f. James S. Reid, The Municipalities of the Roman Empire (1913), p. 166)
- A translation of the Tabula is at https://books.google.com/books?id=c2dJAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA95#v=onepage&q&f=false