Citizenship Diploma Of Gemellus. Dated 17 July 122, the two bronze tablets, wired together through holes at the adjacent corners, are a personal
certificate of the privileges granted to a veteran on his discharge. The front (left) concludes with the words 'certified copy taken from the bronze plaque
posted at Rome on the wall behind the temple of the Deified Augustus near (the statue of) Minerva'.
If record keeping in antiquity is understood in this way, it begins to become clear that we should not be surprised at finding no serious bureaucracy and no
administrative art as such in the ancient world. Those involved in government needed no special training. It is true that, for example, shorthand ́s were
developed, but it is revealing that they are associated at Rome with the names of two men of high culture, Cicero's amanuensis Tiro and Horace's patron
Maecenas. But importantly, although so many papyri concern counting and taxation, the ancient world had no systematic knowledge of accounting, and no