Marcus Petronius Mamertinus

Marcus Petronius Mamertinus, possibly known as Sextus Petronius Mamertinus, was a Roman senator originally of the Equestrian order. He served as suffect consul in 150 AD as the colleague of Marcus Cassius Apollinaris.[1]

Edward Champlin has argued that Petronius Mamertinus is a kinsman of the orator Fronto, based on a letter Fronto wrote to Petronius, commending a young man to him, in which Fronto addresses Petronius as a member of "our familia".[2] Champlin writes, "There can be no doubt that here, as elsewhere, familia means precisely family to Fronto."[3] Anthony Birley notes this supports his earlier argument that Petronius had an African origin, and further argues that his postulated wife, Septimia, was a cousin of the future emperor Septimius Severus.[4] On the other hand, Géza Alföldy suggested Petronius had an Italian background, where the cognomen Mamertinus is most common.[5]

Career

Petronius served as praefectus or governor of Egypt during the reign of Hadrian from 133 to 137.[6] His primary concern as governor of Egypt was to safeguard the harvest and delivery of grain to the populace of Rome, but surviving letters from his administration show his responsibilities extended further. In one edict surviving from his tenure, Petronius bans strategi and the official scribes from authorizing travellers without official warrants to requisition boats and animals for their own use.[7] A second surviving letter concerns his circuit court: that he had planned to go upriver beyond Koptos, but a lack of time forced him to follow his usual practice of only holding sessions in the Thebaid and the Heptanomia.[8] A third addresses the strategos of the Thinite nome, to cease his harassment of the new inhabitants of Antinoöpolis.[9] A fourth relays a decision from Hadrian, acknowledging that for two consecutive years (134 and 135) the Nile failed to inundate the farmlands as needed, and granting a deference in paying the tax.[10]

Graffiti inscribed on the Colossi of Memnon records that Petronius was present at dawn of 10 March 134 to hear the statues sing.[11] He may have been accompanied by Quintus Marcius Hermogenes, then prefect of the classis Augustae Alexandrinae; Hermogenes left graffiti dated to the same year attesting he had also heard the statues.[12]

Under Antoninus Pius, he advanced to the office of Praetorian prefect in Rome holding it from 139 to 143.[13] He must have distinguished himself, for Antoninus Pius adlected him to Senatorial rank, which led to Petronius becoming consul.[3]

Family

He and Septimia had two sons: Marcus Petronius Sura Mamertinus, ordinary consul in 182, who married one of the daughters of emperor Marcus Aurelius, Annia Cornificia Faustina Minor;[14] and Marcus Petronius Sura Septimianus ordinary consul in 190.[4]

References
  1. Werner Eck, "Die Fasti consulares der Regierungszeit des Antoninus Pius, eine Bestandsaufnahme seit Géza Alföldys Konsulat und Senatorenstand" in Studia epigraphica in memoriam Géza Alföldy, hg. W. Eck, B. Feher, and P. Kovács (Bonn, 2013), p. 76
  2. ad Amicos I.10
  3. Champlin, Fronto and Antonine Rome (Harvard: University Press, 1980), p. 10
  4. Birley, Septimus Severus: the African Emperor, revised edition (New Haven: Yale, 1989), pp. 213, 225
  5. Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand unter der Antoninen (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt Verlag, 1977), p. 307
  6. Guido Bastianini, "Lista dei prefetti d'Egitto dal 30a al 299p", Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 17 (1975), pp. 286–288
  7. Papiri della Società italiana per la ricera dei Papiri, 446. English translation in A. S. Hunt and C.C. Edgar, Select Papyri, II. Non-literary Papyri. Public Documents (London: Loeb, 1932), pp. 110f no. 221
  8. Papyrus Rylands, 74. English translation in Robert K. Sherk, The Roman Empire: Augustus to Hadrian (Cambridge: University Press, 1988), pp. 192f
  9. Papyrus Würtzburg, 9. English translation in Sherk, Augustus to Hadrian, p. 193
  10. Papyrus Cairo 49359 + 49360. English translation in Sherk, Augustus to Hadrian, p. 199
  11. CIL III, 44
  12. CIL III, 43
  13. CIL VI, 31147
  14. Birley, Marcus Aurelius, revised edition (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 182

Further reading
  • Michael Petrus Josephus van den Hout, A commentary on the Letters of M. Cornelius Fronto, 1999
  • Albino Garzetti, From Tiberius to the Antonines: a history of the Roman Empire AD 14-192, 1974
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