CONFEZIONE DELLE TABVLAE CERATAE PER DIFFERENTI USI LA SIGILLAZIONE DI ATTI E NEGOZI GIURIDICI E LA CORRISPONDENZA EPISTOLARE

Abstract

The Author examines the sealing systems of the wax tablets containing negotiation writings before and
after the prescriptions of the Senatus Consultum Neronianum of 61p, reviewing the scientific literature on the
subject from Zangemeister up to the present day, but also making use of the finds found in Italy and in the
provinces, in particular in Campania, in Vindonissa in Helvetia, and in Londinium, as well as pictorial representations
of the instrumentum inscriptum. She then draws attention to some carvings in the external faces of the London wax tablets, the nature
of which has not been recognised, interpreting them as housings for metal hinges, subsequently removed, intended to hermetically close the correspondence,
in particular the military one, in view of its shipment to the recipient via courier a ueredis. This system appears very different from
that attested for the negotiation documents, in which the seals were placed in a recessed groove (sulcus), where the linen string that tied tablets I
and II was glued, while tablet III served as a lid seal protection. The more expensive and elaborate metal hinges of the tablets reserved for the
epistles, however, are explained by the need to make them travel while preserving the reserved content. A carving different from the others,
which suggests a more sophisticated metal hinge, is found in T.Lond. 20, on which the address, now mutilated, of a letter from Londinium is
written. A new paleographic examination allowed the author to reform the reading Aug(usti) emerito into Aúe emerito, which led to a more precise
understanding of the text. For this type of document, in addition to the address of the recipient of the letters, usually reported in the scriptura
exterior of the tabula, further information was also provided, such as profession, paternity and residence. In T. London. 20, in addition to specifying
the qualification of emeritus of the recipient, the peculiar repetition of the epithet, connected to salutatio Aúe, but unusually apparently expressed in
the dative (emerito), rather than the vocative emerite, seems to be related to a use of Vulgar Latin, attested from the Republican age to Late Antique
in both literary and epigraphic sources, with the nominative and vocative of the second declension in -os / -o.

KEYWORDS
Senatus Consultum Neronianum, wax tablets, negotia, epistulae, emeritus.