Memory, Money, and Status at Misenum: Three New Inscriptions from the Collegium of the Augustales

More than thirty years — a generation of man — have passed since the chance discovery in 1968 of what has been referred to since as the collegium of the Augustales at Misenum. In addition to statuary and architectural elements of exceptional interest, the excavations, which presented formidable technical problems, have yielded a rich epigraphical dossier pertaining to the local Augustales, and to political, social, economic, religious, and administrative aspects of their organization from the Julio-Claudian and late Flavian periods to the end of the Antonine age. One of these inscriptions has at last received appropriate scholarly attention; it both whets the appetite for more and reveals the inadequacies of the cursory accounts of the dossier published previously. Now that all the material recovered from the site has been transported to the Castello Aragonese di Baia, and is attractively displayed in the new Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei, one dares to hope that the entire complex and its contents will soon receive the comprehensive archaeological and historical treatment that they so richly deserve.