Prosopographic notes on roman mining in Moesia superior: The families of wealthy immigrants in the mining districts of Moesia superior

The author analyzes epigraphic evidence (fresh or based on documents the reading and/or interpretation of which has been revised in sections I-V) to show that Roman mining in Moesia Superior, under the Principate, was largely based on private - frequently senatorial - financial investment. I An unpublished inscription (IInd cent.?) from the Kosmaj argentariae discloses two Publii Fundanii, obviously members of the same family which was to produce P. Fundanius Eutyches, a colonus of the near-by Rudnik mines early in Septimius Severus' reign (IMS I 168). It is perhaps no simple coincidence that, long before, a P. Fundanius Hospes was active in the ferrariae of Noricum (CIL III 4915 a, Magdalensberg); as is well known, the involvement of wealthy Romans in the mining business tended to be hereditary. II The set of Dardanian lead-ingots found at the wreck site of Caesarea Palaestinae registers interesting stamps (Ann. ?p. 1999, 1683; Domitianic). Their testimony can be understood, on a number of points, more completely than has been done by previous editors (I shall discuss the ingots' epigraphic problems in a separate article). Here, let us note that the stamp (d) P.T.R., is best read P(ublius) T(arius) R(ufus) (the genitive construction being possible, too). Like several other families from Liburnia and Nedinum itself (e.g. the Quinti Gnorii), the Tarii Rufi (there seems to be independent evidence that they employed the praenomen Publius [CIL III 2877] among other praenomina) will have invested their money in the mining of Illyricum/Upper Moesia. This state of affairs probably went back to L. Tarius Rufus, cos. 16 BC. III As briefly noted by A. Evans (and more or less forgotten by later scholars), there was a Roman mining region in northwest Dardania (Mokra Gora - Suva Planina), which has left traces in the toponymy (the eloquent Serbian place-name "Rudnik"), archaeological material (including "traces of the ancient workings "), and inscriptions (the mining aspects of which remained unobserved). The presence of rich people/bearers of significant gentilicia should be pointed out here; it tends to be overlooked by the epigraphists. A Greek inscription from Rudnik (Spomenik 71 [1931] 92 no. 215) records a Fulcinius (line 1), who probably originated in Macedonia and may have been a distant successor to the Fulcinius figuring as quaestor in the province's Fasti for 148 BC. The economic expansion of the Fulcinii from Macedonia to the mining districts in the north o