The rescriptum of Emperor Maxentius on Lucilla of Carthage on the eve of the Donatist schism
Abstract
The study of some unpublished documents coming from several European and international libraries, after the publication of Anejos VIII, and the reconsideration of other primary sources that have already been studied, would seem to confirm most hypotheses raised in the book with a good margin of probability. The comparative analysis of these documents will allow us, as follows: a) to describe the historical background of the two letters, especially with regard to the rescriptum; b) to suggest a more precise dating of this rescriptum; and c) to outline the manuscript tradition of the two letters that, starting from the legal text in Koine Greek, are transformed into an apologetic literary text by means of interpolations that mostly affected the edict of tolerance. The preliminary study of some legal papyri, in comparison with the different versions of Ep. I, allowed us to propose a critical reconstruction of the text that has undergone numerous interpolations over the centuries. The first letter perfectly matches with both the structure and the legal terminology of the Hellenistic-Roman laws, in so fully mirroring the words used by Eusebius and Optatus to describe Maxentius' edict of tolerance.
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References
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