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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 June 2015
In the small collection of antiquities in the Municipality building (Belediye) of Taşköprü, in the vilayet of Kastamonu, there is a Latin inscription which is said to have been recently brought from the Karasayit Cami (formerly the Kurşunlu Mektep) in Taşköprü itself. It was declared on the authority of the Belediye Reisi, Bay Mustafa Yılmaz to whom I am greatly indebted for his help and assistance, that the stone had been recovered from the foundations of the old school. The stone was carried, it may be presumed, from the site of Pompeiopolis, situated across the river, immediately above the Ottoman bridge. I saw the inscription on 4th October, 1976, in company with Bay Nurettin Çakir, Assistant at the Antiquities Museum of Kastamonu, while carrying out, on behalf of the RECAM project, that section of the programme which concerns Kastamonu and Taşköprü.
The inscription is well cut and the lettering is good. The stone is chipped at the front on both the left and the right edges but the top and sides have not been broken. The lower part of the inscription, however, is lost. The space and, therefore, the number of letters to be restored on each edge can be estimated by extrapolating a line from the two sides of the block.
1 For Ti. Subatianus Aquila, see, in general, RE IVA.1, 474 Subatianus 1) (Stein 1932)Google ScholarPflaum, H.-G., Les Carrières Procuratoriennes II, 650Google Scholar. For his prefecture in Egypt, see now Bastianini, G., “Lista dei prefetti d'Egitto” (ZPE Band 17 Heft 3, pp. 305–6Google Scholar). An example of his handwriting survives in a document of this period; see F. Preisigke and F. Bilabel, Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Aegypten, no. 4639, line 7 (= David, M. and Van Groningen, B. A., Papyrological Primer, p. 13Google Scholar, no. 7). On the qualifications of the prefects of Egypt, see Brunt, P. A., “The administration of Roman Egypt”, JRS LXV (1975), pp. 124–47Google Scholar, esp. p. 147. Brunt writes, reasonably enough, (p. 129), that “… Ti. Claudius Subatianus Aquila can be assumed to have had (a) varied career elsewhere.”
2 For the province of Mesopotamia, see RE XV.1, 1158G (Schachermeyr 1931)Google Scholar, where it is suggested (on the basis of Cassius Dio LXXV 3, 2) that the province was first held by a procurator, a view that may now be finally discarded; cf. RE XXII.2, 1327 f. (Ensslin 1954)Google Scholar. The status of praefectus Aegypti and praefectus Mesopotamiae are discussed by Pflaum, op. cit. II, 610.
