Resumen de Gaio Fufidio Asiatico, legatus Augusti pro Praetore Provinciae Moesiae: un nuovo senatore di età giulio-claudia. Su un trapezoforo iscritto dal suburbio orientale di Roma
Recent archaeological investigations in the Pietralata neighbourhood in Rome, close to the ancient via Tiburtina, have brought to light an extraordinary marble trapezophorum (stone table support) with a honorary inscription to C. Fufidius Asiaticus from two clients of his, the freedmen T. Caesius Pelops and T. Caesius Amandus. The honoured man, whose political and military career (cursus honorum) is briefly mentioned, can be identified with a new senator of the Julio-Claudian Age, probably coming from Southern Latium and specifically Arpinum. From Cicero (Cic., Ad Fam., XIII, 12) we learn, in fact, of the existing family relationships between the gens Fufidia and gens Caesia of Arpinum around the middle of the 1st century B.C. and this type of link could explain, some decades later, the reasons of the patronage of a Fufidius over two freedmen of a T. Caesius. Besides the rule as legatus legionis I under the emperor Tiberius, the most important historical information given by the inscription concerns his office as legatus Augusti pro praetore provinciae Moesiae under the emperor Claudius and allows to insert the name of C. Fufidius Asiaticus in a short list of a few known legati of pretorian rank, who flanked the main consular legati in Moesia until 44 A.D. The trapezophorum, which also has a figured decoration consisting of vegetal patterns and Erotes, can be dated in the forties of the 1st century A.D. and can be included in a small group of similar marble inscribed table supports, made mainly between the Augustean and Claudian-Neronian period and discovered especially in central Italy. They were dedicated to senators by provinces, cities and social groups and, according to W. Eck and H. von Hesberg, they substained marble rectangular pedestals for equestrian statues depicting the honoured themeselves. The new Pietralata trapezophorum is only the fourth of this kind found in Rome. Its discovery in an area belonging to an ancient Roman villa suggests that around the forties of the 1st century A.D. C. Fufidius Asiaticus was its owner and that the offer – even if the trapezophorum was reused in Late Antiquity – stood originally in the gardens of his villa.
