2004: 184; cf. Bickerman 1968: 184). Thus Frontinus and the
inscription from the Porta Praenestina agree on the year 52.
Moreover, Frontinus specifies that the date of the dedication of
the aqueduct was the Kalends, that is the first day, of August.
This makes it likely that (a) the Porta Praenestina inscription
records Claudius’ titles as they were on 1 August 52; and (b) he
had already received his twenty-seventh acclamation as imperator
by that date. If that is correct, then the twenty-sixth acclamation
must have occurred earlier than this, and therefore the Gallio
inscription must date to some time before 1 August 52, perhaps
in the first half of that year.
If the upper limit for the date of the Gallio inscription is
the first half of 52, can we set a lower limit? Unfortunately,
not a single inscription correlates Claudius’ twenty-fifth accla-
mation as imperatorwith a year in which he held the tribunician
power. There is, however, an inscription that lists his twenty fourth
acclamation, and gives the emperor’s titles as follows:[To Tiberius] Claudius, son of Drusus, Caesar Augustus
Germanicus, Pontifex Maximus, holding the tribunician
[power] for the eleventh time, acclaimed imperatortwenty-
four times, consul five times, censor.
(Corpus Inscriptionum LatinarumIII, no. 1977).Thus Claudius had been acclaimed imperatortwenty-four times
in the year from 25 January 51 to 24 January 52. His twenty-fifth
acclamation must therefore have occurred either later in that year
or in the one following. We could try to fix the date further if
we knew more about the sequence of Claudius’ acclamations.
Unfortunately, the surviving data are fragmentary. Two further
inscriptions correlate a twenty-second acclamation also with the
year 25 January 51 to 24 January 52 (Corpus Inscriptionum
LatinarumIII, nos. 476 and 7206). This means that he must also
have received a twenty-third acclamation in that year, even if no
inscription attests it. This has prompted scholars to correlate
Claudius’ acclamations as imperatorwith the following years:CONTEXTS FOR THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY
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