Rome and the East
that after the conclusion of the synod—whose letter was written, at the latest,
before news of the death of Dionysius of Rome in December had arrived,
and possibly as early as November of that year (see text to n. above)—the
Antiochene congregation responded more urgently to Paul’s obduracy, and,
perhaps some time in , despatched a delegation to the Emperor.
The evidence of the early Constantinian period suggests that it normally
took several months from the issuing of an imperial reply to its arrival in
a provincial city.^161 Similarly, though here our information is less precise, it
will have taken a comparable period for a delegation to reach the emperor
wherever he happened to be, to gain an audience, and to receive an answer.^162
These were, it hardly needs to be said, troubled times. Claudius was mainly
engaged in combating barbarian invasions in central and eastern Europe up
to the moment of his death at Sirmium, which certainly took place later than
December ,^163 and seems now not to have been until summer, .^164 It
would not be in the least surprising if, for one reason or another, no imperial
reply was forthcoming until given by Aurelian; the occasion could have been
any moment from the very beginning of his reign onwards.
.Cod. Just. , , ; , , ; , , ; , , ; , , . For reasons which remain
obscure, all these rescripts, to which the dates ofpropositio(posting up) at thecomitatus(the
emperor’s court) and acceptance by the city concerned are attached, date from the decade
–.
. Though where our sources give some indication of the time spent on embassies,
it tends to be in exceptional cases. But note, e.g., Jos.,Ant. , –—deliberate delay
by Tiberius; Philo.Leg. /—Jewish Alexandrian embassy waiting for an audience with
Gaius; Pliny,Pan.,–.
. Clandius’ thirdtrib[unicia] pot[estas]is clearly attested,CILII ; III ILS
. See L. Bivona, ‘‘Per la cronologia di Aureliano,’’Epigraphica (): ; as Bivona
points out (), this essential datum is missing from J. Lafaurie, ‘‘La chronologie impériale
de à ,’’Bull. Soc. Nat. Ant. France(): ; for the evidence on Claudius’ activities,
see P. Damerau,Kaiser Claudius II Goticus, Klio, Beih. XXXIII, n.f., ().
. See J. Rea, ‘‘The Chronology’’ (of the Corn Dole Archive,P. Oxy. –) pub-
lished inP. Oxy. XL (), pp. –, which the author was kind enough to show me
before publication. The scheme which emerges is as follows: () Claudius survived until
shortly before the end of his second Egyptian regnal year (/); () Quintillus is at-
tested on Alexandrian coins but no known papyri are dated by him; () the third year of
Claudius is attested on coins and papyri, suggesting that the news of his death had not
yet spread—/ is therefore Quintillus I (coins), Claudius , and also (from December)
Aurelian I/Vabalathus ; () subsequently Aurelian re-numbered his Egyptian regnal years
to date from the death of Claudius, so making / Aurelian I; () Egypt seems to have
been recovered in the summer of .