The Phantom Squadron of the Ravennate Fleet on the Black Sea in the 1st Century AD

Author(s): Tadeusz Sarnowski

Source: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Bd. 157 (2006), pp. 256-260
Published by: Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH, Bonn (Germany)
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20191134 .
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256

The Phantom Squadron of the Ravennate Fleet on the Black Sea in

the 1st Century AD

Tile-stamps from the Roman fort on the Ai-Todor cape near Yalta, identified with the Ptolemaic

X?g?E,1, cannot be overlooked in any reconstruction of the political and military history of the Crimea
in the Roman They were published
period. repeatedly2, but only one stamp has ever been presented as a

photo in publication3. The following (Fig. 1) is usually dated to the 1st century AD.
CIL III 14215, 5 (many fragments of stamps on roofing-tiles [tegulae] and bricks [bipedales])4:
VEX/G RAV SP
To date, the following readings
suggested: have been
-
vex(illatio) I c(lassis) Rav(ennatis) s(umptu) p(ublico) M. I. Rostowzew5
? names a -
vex(illatio) IG RAV SP( presumed of centurion) Rostowzew6
-
vex(illatio) I c(lassis) Rav(ennatis) s(ua) p(ecunia) Rostowzew7
-
vex(illatio) I c(lassis) Rav(ennatis) s(umpta) p(ublico) V. M. Zubar8
I c(lassis) Rav(ennatis) - M. P. Speidel, T.
vex(illatio) S(cythica?, -inopensis ?, -everianae?) P(ontica)
Sarnowski9.

The standing conviction so far has been to read the first letters in the second line as an abbreviation for
the Ravennate Fleet10. The first letter of the second line is undoubtedly a G, as M. Rostowzew had

already noted, but the letters C and G are frequently interchangeable. In Lower Moesian and Dacian

1
Ptol. Geogr. Ill 6, 2; cf. M. Rostowzew, R?mische Besatzungen in der Krim und das Kastell Charax, Klio 2, 1902, 95.
For helpful hints and comments I am grateful toW. Eck (K?ln) and T. Pt?ciennik (Warsaw) and for language improvement
to A. Poulter (Nottingham).
2 na i Aj-Todorska Zurnal Ministerstva
M. I. Rostovcev, Rimskie garnizony Tavriceskom poluostrove krepost,
Narodnogo Prosvescenija 308, March 1900, 154-156, No 1-3 = idem, R?mische Besatzungen (n. 1), 93, No 1-3 = CIL III

14215, 3-5: LE XI CL, PER L.A.C. >/ LEG. I. IT. PRAEP/ VEX. MOES. INF, VEX/G RAV SP; V.D. Blavatskij, Charaks,
Materialy i issledovanija po archeologii SSSR 19, 1951, 253-254; E. I. Solomonik, O rimskom flote v Chersonese, VDI
1966, No 2, 165, 1; T. Sarnowski, V. M. Zubar, R?mische Besatzungstruppen auf der S?dkrim und eine Bauinschrift aus
fig.
dem Kastell Charax, ZPE 112, 1996, 234, Abb. 3; D. Zhuravlev, G. Kamelina, Klejma na stroitel'nych materialach iz
Charaksa v sobranii Gosudarstvennogo Istoriceskogo Muzeja, Bosporskie issledovanija 8, 2005, 350-362.
3 Solomonik
(n. 2).
4 were
Bipedalis used to bridge
bricks gaps between the pilae of the hypocaust in the bath building. A single fragment
of a tegula bearing the stamp was also found in the Yasnaja Polana sanatorium lying 1.5 km away and above the fort.
5 Rimskie 155.
Rostovcev, garnizony (n. 2),
6
Idem, R?mische Besatzungen (n. 1), 94.
7 IOSPE
I2,p. 509.
8 v Krim, Rimskoe voennoe
V. M. Zubar, Pro pochid Plavtija Sil'vana Archeologija Kiev, 63, 1988, 22; idem,
v Tavrike, Stratum 2000, 14; idem, in: A. O. Vladimirov, D. V. Zhuravlev et al., Chersones v
prisutstvie plus 4, Tavriceskij
-
seredine I v. do n.e. VI v. n.e. Ocerki istorii I kultury, Charkov 2004, 51.
9M. P. Speidel in a letter to the present author; Sarnowski, Zubar (n. 2), 233.
10 et l'histoire de la marine militaire sous
Cf. M. Redd?, Mare Nostrum. Les infrastructures, le dispositif l'Empire
Romain, Rome 1986, 263; T. Sarnowski, Das r?mische Heer im Norden des Schwarzen Meeres, Archeologia Warszawa 38,
1988, 67; O. M. Zahariade, Les forces navales du Bas Danube et de la Mer Noire aux 1er-Vie si?cles, Oxford
Bounegru,
1996, 2, 12, 31. Ever since Rostowcew, Russian and Ukrainian studies
subject on the (see an overview in T. Sarnowski,
Silvan i eskadra-prizrak na Cernom more v I v. n.e., VDI
in print) have consistently
2006, included the Charax stamps
Plavtij
in a discussion of early dating of Roman military presence in the Crimea and the course and forms of military action taken by
Moesian troops the Taurians, or Sarmathians.
against Scythians
 The Phantom Squadron of the Ravennate Fleet on the Black Sea 257

inscriptions a single G followed by a stop could also have been used to abbreviate the praenomen

G(aius)11, usually written with a C.

Rostowzew had suspected that the stamp actually gave the names of an officer, G. Rav(onius or

-illius) Sp(ectatus), yet he never published his solution. It failed to attract the attention of scholars,
concealed as it was in a description of the site on the Ai-Todor cape, which he prepared in Latin for the
second edition of the first volume of IOSPE (= Inscriptiones orae septentrionalis Ponti Euxini)12.

Today, with the proper onomastic tools at our disposal13, we can easily check the veracity of Rostow
zew's conjectures. Among the few nomina beginning in RAV the most common name is Ravonius, and

among the twenty or more rare cognomina beginning with SP, Speratus. Assuming this identification is
correct, then the person mentioned in the text of the stamp most likely originated from the heavily
romanized province of Dalmatia14.
We don't know the stamp in 1916 although he appears to have been
how M. Rostowzew understood
inclined to read the names in the genetive case, which could mean that we are dealing with an extremly
rare instance of calling a vexillation after its commander15, just as most legionary and auxiliary centu
riae and turmae are referred to. The reading Vex(illarii) G(ai ?) Rav(onii ?) Sp(erati ?) would be more
acceptable. The absence of a title possibly possessed by G. Rav. Sp. may suggest that the stamp gives
the names a person of connected with, or responsible for manufacture and can be expanded as

Vex(illationi) G. Rav(onius ?) Sp(eratus ?). There are plenty of parallels among the legionary stamps16
but none of the type (legion's name + personal name) has been reported so far from Lower Moesia17. It
is worth noting that two Roman military stamps from the Crimean sites, which in all likelihood
abbreviate the centurion's names, do not give their titles Three other tile-stamps
either18. from the
Crimea and Tyras mentioning legionary centurions as acting-commanders of the Lower Moesian
vexillations19 seem
to speak in favour of Rostowzew's opinion. It is therefore reasonable to admit that
the simplest and likeliest translation of the stamp from Charax to be offered here is 6iVex(illarii or

-illatio) <under> G. Rav. Sp., <centurion>". We are of course far from being certain what expression in
the Latin spoken by the Lower Moesian vexillarii the most common was, but the formula sub +

11The =
inscription CIL III 14491 IDRII 204 (see photo 204) from Sucidava with two lettersG and C in the names of
G(aius) Crispinus G(ai)fil. Claudia (tribu) is probably the best example of such a practice.
12 -
IOSPE I2, p. 509: "Tertia (formula, i.e. stamp
TS) primo ita a me legebatur: vex(illatio) c(lassis) Rav(ennatis) s(ua)
p(ecunia); nunc tarnen
ita supplenda
haec esse non
affirmaverim, ex ultimi versus litteris centurionis nomen
potiusque
eliciendum esse censeo, qui vexillationi praepositus fuerit, puta C. Ravfonius vel -illius) Sp(ectatus); quae supplementa
tarnen exempli causa attuli, quia Ravonii et Ravillii nomina in Pannonia occurrunt. Priora mea ea re infirmantur
supplementa
in c(lassis) turn vero quod abest sollemne -
quod C aegre solveris, classis Ravennatis vocabulum praetoria. Ne hoc quidem

probabile est, in SP formulam s(ua) p(ecunia) latere".

*3 cum
A. M?csy et. al., Nomenciator provinciarum Europae Latinarum et Galliae Cisalpinae indice inverso, Buda

pestini, 1983; B. L?rincz, Onomasticon provinciarum Europae Latinarum, Wien, 2002.

14
Ravonius recorded eight times in Dalmatia and once in Pannonia.
15 See BGUII 600
(Fayum), line 17.
16 ex.
Cf. J. Szilagyi, Inscriptiones tegularum Pannonicarum, Budapest 1933, 63 ff.; A. Neumann, Ziegel aus Vindo

bona, Wien 1973, 12 ff.

17
Among unpublished terracotta pipes from Novae (recent Bulgarian excavations) there are two bearing stamps that
consist of legion's name, tria nomina of pipe-makers and the verb fecit.
18AE
1998, 1163 e: OPUS NOV = opus Nov(ii) and probably also AE 1998,1163 f: OPUS PUBLIC = opus Public(ii).
Because of relative rarity of the nomen it seems reasonable to suspect that Nov(ius) mentioned on the stamps from Balaklava
and Chersonesus was the same man as Novius centurion of the legio I It?lica, recorded stones
Ulpianus, by three inscribed
from Balaklava (AE 1998,1154, 1156,1158), including one building inscription (AE 1998,1156).
19CIL III
14215, 4 (Charax): PER L.A.C. >/ LEG. I. IT. PRAEP/ VEX. MOES. INF; Sarnowski, Das r?mische Heer
(n. 10), 74 f., No 21 (Tyras): CIC>LI; idem (n. 10), 73, No 15 = N. Son, Tira rimskogo vremeni, Kiev 1993, 33 f., photo 4
(Tyras): LEG I IT, LEG V/ M, LEG XI CL/ ET AUX S ANT PL > LIL
258 T. Sarnowski

commander's name20 was

probably preferable to sub cura, curam agente, curante or instante +
commander's name in the genitive or ablative cases21.

Many epigraphical records collected by R. Saxer in his monography on the Roman army vexil
lations may suggest to complement the stamp with the preposition per and to interpret it as <Per>
vex(illarios or -illationem) G. Rav. Sp, but by analogy with PER L.A.C. >/ LEG. I. IT. PRAEP./ VEX.
MOES. INF from Charax (Fig. 2) it is also likely to complement the stamp in the form Vex/ <per> G.
Rav. Sp.22
Much more important than the above proposed possibilities of reading the stamp is to answer the

question what vexillation was meant. On one of the stamps from Balaklava the full name of the
detachment was also abbreviated to VEX23. There seems little doubt that in both cases the abbreviation
VEX probably refers to the same vexillation that is mentioned on a stamp from Charax (Fig. 2) as
vex(illatio) Moes(iae) inflerioris), and as vexill(atio) exerc(itus) [Moesiae in?erioris)] and VEMI =

v(exillatio) e(xercitus) M(oesiae) i(nferioris) on inscriptions from Balaklava and on stamps from
Chersonesus, Balaklava and the Roman fort on Kazackaya hill near Inkerman in the Crimea24. Some

working-parties of the vexillation were engaged not only in production of bricks and tiles but also in

building activity.
Because the chemical compositions of the clay used in the stamped finds are all identical, this
- -
indicates that the two stamps from Charax (VEX/G RAV SP Fig. 1 and PER L. A. C. >/ LEG. I. IT.
PRAEP./ VEX. MOES. INF - Fig. 2) date to more or less the same time and that the bricks and tiles

bearing the stamps were made in the same tilery, presumably in the whereabouts of the Ai-Todor

cape25. The dated building inscriptions from Charax (AE 1997, 1332, of AD 166) and Balaklava (AE
1998, 1156, of AD 139-161) with the vexillation's name suggest that both ans?te stamps from Charax
can hardly be earlier than the late 30-ties of the second century. A fuller and more detailed text of the
three-line stamp (Fig. 2) leads one to believe that it could be earlier than the VEX/G RAV SP stamp.
To sum up the above remarks on the stamp VEX/G RAV SP it seems reasonable to infer that the
common extension vex(illatio)/ c(lassis) Rav(ennatis) SP is less probable than the following readings:
Vex(illarii or -illatio) I <sub or curam agente or curante or instante or cum>) G. Rav(onio ?) Sp(erato?)
Vex(illarii) G. Rav(onii ?) Sp(erati ?)
Vex(illarii or -illatio) I <per > G. Rav(onium ?) Sp(eratum ?)
<Per> vex(illarios or -illationem) G. Rav(onius ?) Sp(eratus ?)
Vex(illationi) G. Rav(onius ?) Sp(eratus ?)

20 For in inscriptions or tile-stamps the Lower Moesian detachments see the third of the stamps
this formula mentioning
cited in the note above and ILBulg 134 (Somovit): Leg(ionis) VMaced(onicae)/ vexillariil sub lulilum Vib(ium) vo(tum). Cf.
RIB II 2463. 58 (tile-stamp from Holt): Leg XXW sub Logo principe ?) and CIL XIII 6623 = ILS 9119 (Obernburg, of AD
Pr. P.f !) in lignari(i)s sub principe T. Volusinio Sabino et T. Honoratio Dentilliano
207): Vexil. leg. XXII agentium (sic opt.
21 zu den Vexillationen des r?mischen Kaiserheeres von Augustus bis Diokletian, K?ln
See R. Saxer, Untersuchungen
1967,130.
22 same is found in CIL VIII 1 = 10990 in Tripolitania): ... vexi[lla/tio Ill Au]g.
The formula (Cidamus leg. p.v.
Severianae [-]uum, > leg. eiusdem/ fecit.
perl
23 AE
1998, 1163 c.
24AE
1998, 1155 = T. Sarnowski, O. Ja. Savelja, Balaklava. R?mische Milit?rstation und Heiligtum des Jupiter Doli
=
chenus, Warszawa 2000, 86, No 24; AE 1998, 1156 = Sarnowski, Savelja, 86 f., No 25; AE 1998, 1163 e Sarnowski, Zur
und Deutung der lateinischen aus der S?dkrim, in: Sarnowski, Savelja, 219, Type 1; Sarnowski, Die
Lesung Ziegelstempel
R?mer bei den Griechen auf der
s?dlichen Krim. Neue Entdeckungen und Forschungen, 19th Intern. Congress of Roman
- of the abbreviation VEMI in ZPE
Frontier Studies. Papers, P?cs 2005 in print. I had suggested the above reading 1996,

112, note 35 before the discovery of the Balaklava inscriptions.

2^ T. M. Daszkiewicz, G. Schneider, istorii i
Sarnowski, Rimskaja cerepica Juznogo Kryma, Materialy po archeologii,

etnografii Tavrii 11, 2005,119-143.

 The Phantom Squadron of the Ravennate Fleet on the Black Sea 259

G. Rav(onius ?) Sp(eratus ?) was in all likelihood a centurion of one of the Lower Moesian legions26,
standing, like L.A.C., at the head of a vexillatio composed of not legionaries from the legion in which
he was an officer, but mostly of soldiers from auxiliary troops. The inscriptions from Balaklava and
- or - the Lower Moesian to confirm of the
Charax, dedicated by for soldiers of auxilia21, appear
vexillation's name. To my mind, there is no reason to think, as do V.D. Blavatskij and V.M. Zubar28,
that the three-line stamp is evidence of the legio I It?lica was ever stationed in Charax.
that a vexillatio
The relatively abundant number of inscriptions from Charax yields no testimony of any building
activities other than the said tile-stamps and inscription of AD 166. Accordingly, it can be cautiously

proposed that Rav(onius ?) Sp(eratus ?) was in command of a vexillatio that not only produced bricks
and tiles in a tilery somewhere in the neighbourhood of Charax, but was also building some structure29,

perhaps the one mentioned in the inscription of AD 16630.

Regardless of whether the stamps VEX/G RAV SP from Charax actually date from AD 166 or are

slightly earlier or later, we cannot sustain any longer the common belief that links, directly or indirectly,
the beginning of Roman military presence in the Crimea with the Ravennate Fleet as early as the reigns
of Nero or Vespasian. According to Vegetius, the Black Sea was within the operational jurisdiction of
this fleet31, but convincing epigraphic proof of this has yet to appear.

University of Warsaw Tadeusz Sarnowski

26 On the names on military from see Sarnowski,

of centurions tile-stamps the Crimea, Daszkiewicz, Schneider, op. cit.,
131.
27 IOSPE I2 677 -
(Charax) a[la-] Arreva[c(orum)]; AE 1995, 1351 (Balaklava) revised by O. Ja. Savelja, T.
Sarnowski, Der Grabstein des Iulius Vales aus Balaklava, in: Sarnowski, Savelja (n. 23), 192 (there also on soldiers from
-
auxiliary troops in Chersonesus) ala Atecto(rigiana).
28
Blavatskij (n. 2), 288-289; V. M. Zubar, Rimskaja krepost' Charax, Stratum plus 4, 2000,193.
29 a case - see n.
We would thus be dealing with apparently similar to that of Novius Ulpianus above 17.
30
Assuming I have conjectured rightly, then the text of the inscription of AD 166 from Charax (AE 1997, 1332) should
be reconstructed as: [Imperatoribus Caesar]ibus I [M. Aurelio Antonijno et I [L. Aurelio Vero I [Armeniacis
Aujgustis
Partjhicis [Ma/ximis Medicis imp(eratoribus)] IIII opfera I?] tegulis I [M. Pontius Lelijanus I [leg(atus) Augg(ustorum
duorum) pr(o)pr(etore) p]er vexiliat(ionem or -iones) I [Moes(iae) infierioris) curam] agente I [G. Rav(onio ?) Sp(erato ?)
>(centurione) leg(ionis)] XI Cl(audiae). Line 7 I would complete with the names of M. Pontius Laelianus, who was

governor of Lower Moesia probably in AD 166-169; cf. A. Stein, Die Legatem von Moesien, 1944, 76-79; J. Fitz,
Budapest
Die Laufbahn der Statthalter in der r?mischen Provinz Moesia Interior, Weimar 1966, 47; B. E. Thomasson, Laterculi
Praesidium. Moesia. Dacia. Thracia, Gothoburgi 1976, 20, 22; G. Alf?ldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand unter den Antoni
nen, Bonn 1977, 233. M. Servilius Fabianus Maximus is equally likely, however.
31 V
Vegetius, Epit. 1.
260 T. Sarnowski

1. Fragments of VEX/G RAV SP from Charax in the Crimea. Yalta's Pushkin Museum. Inv. Nos KII 75422,
Fig. tile-stamps
Kn 1087, KII 75440

2. Fragments of tile-stamps PER L.A.C. >/ LEG. I. IT. PRAEP/ VEX. MOES. INF from Charax in the Crimea. Yalta's
Fig.
Pushkin Museum. Inv. Nos Kn 1088, Ap. A 4-515