Sodales

In a little area of High Guadalquivir, Sierra de Cazorla Region, a group of latin inscriptions with a relationship with funerary and professional associations have been located. The corpus of inscriptions analyzed in this assignment stands out for its focus on a limited and defined geographical space. The importance of this group is in its concentration in a small geographic space and in its singularity. There are only few examples of funerary associations in Hispania. These epigraphs are the evidence of the importance of these associations in old saltus Tugiensis

The finding, in 1977, of the Lapis Satricanus has shed new light on the forms of association in archaic Rome, which can be now related to the Indo-European pattern of the 'Gefolgschaft'. A renewed analysis of the sources shows the importance of the institution during the regal period and the beginning of the republic, and especially helps in understanding the provision of the XII tables on the sodales (tab. 8, 27), which was aimed at reducing the strength of the patricians, in parallel to the provision that weakened the clientship by leaving unpunished the client who had left his patronus (tab. 8, 21).

This paper suggests a new reading of three epigraphic fragments pertaining to the fasti of the sodales Augustales Claudiales from Bovillae. Thanks to the identification of a consular date - [Q(uinto) Servilio Pu]dente, L(ucio) Fufidio P[ollione co(n)s(ulibus)] -, one of them can now be dated to 166 CE.