Tiberius Claudius Verus

Tiberius Claudius Verus (fl. 60s AD) was a local politician in Pompeii. He held the magistracy of duovir in 62 AD, when an earthquake devastated the city on February 5.[1]

Claudius Verus lived near or along the Via di Nola.[2] For the purposes of historical and archaeological study, Pompeii is divided into nine regions, each of which contains numbered blocks (insulae);[3] Verus lived on the block designated IX.8, IX.9, V.3 or V.4, as indicated by several inscriptions that preserve campaign advertising displayed by neighbors who supported his candidacy.[4] One of his neighbors recommended him as an "upright young man."[5] Several interrelated inscriptions show that Verus was part of a group of men who supported each other's political careers.[6] None comes from an "old" Pompeiian family, and each has a gens name that is well attested at Rome and either Puteoli or Delos. They are associated with some of the largest houses in Pompeii, and their wealth suggests commercial interests.[7] It is possible that Verus and his faction were imperial freedmen.[8]

Verus's praenomen and nomen indicate that the Tiberii Claudii would have been his traditional patrons. Just before the earthquake, Verus had been organizing games (ludi) in honor of Nero, to be held February 25 and 26. Among the planned festivities were a hunt (venatio), athletic games, and either "sprinklings of scented water to refresh the crowd" or distributions of money (sesterces): the inscription has been read both ways.[9] No gladiators were advertised; gladiatorial contests had been banned in Pompeii in 59 AD, following a riot in the amphitheatre.[10] Although the earthquake most likely caused the cancellation of the games, they may have been presented in some form for the sake of restoring morale.[11]

In the early decades following the discovery of the luxurious House of the Centenary in 1879, August Mau proposed that Verus had been its owner.[12] It has also been argued that the Centenary's owner was Aulus Rustius Verus,[13] with Claudius Verus living in an otherwise unidentified house at V.3. No scholarly consensus exists on Claudius Verus's address.[14]

References
  1. James L. Franklin, Jr., Pompeis Difficile Est: Studies in the Political Life of Imperial Pompeii (University of Michigan Press, 2001), p. 133.
  2. Franklin, Pompeis Difficile Est, p. 133.
  3. Roger Ling, "A Stranger in Town: Finding the Way in an Ancient City," Greece & Rome 37 (1990), p. 204.
  4. Franklin, Pompeis Difficile Est, pp. 133–134, 138.
  5. Iuvenem integr[um], CIL IV.3741; Franklin, Pompeis Difficile Est, p. 138.
  6. Franklin, Pompeis Difficile Est, p. 147. For more on campaign advertising in Pompeii, see Frank Frost Abbott, "Municipal Politics in Pompeii," Classical Journal 3 (1907) 58–66.
  7. Franklin, Pompeis Difficile Est, p. 147.
  8. Franklin, Pompeis Difficile Est, pp. 147–148.
  9. CIL IV.7989a; Franklin, Pompeis Difficile Est, pp. 136–137; Antonio Varone, "Voices of the Ancients: A Stroll through Public and Private Pompeii," in Rediscovering Pompeii («L'Erma» di Bretschneider, 1990), p. 29. On this type of advertising, see Ray Laurence, Roman Pompeii: Space and Society (Routledge, 2007), pp. 172–173.
  10. Franklin, Pompeis Difficile Est, p. 137; Laurence, Roman Pompeii, p. 173; recounted by Tacitus Annales 14.17.
  11. Franklin, Pompeis Difficile Est, p. 137.
  12. CIL IV.5229; August Mau, Pompeii: Its Life and Art, translated by Francis W. Kelsey (Macmillan, 1907), p. 559.
  13. Franklin, Pompeis Difficile Est, p. 134, citing Matteo Della Corte, pp. 216–217.
  14. Franklin, Pompeis Difficile Est, p. 134.
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