Termini graccani e terre di Mefite in Hirpinia.

Gracchan boundary stones and lands of Mefitis in Hirpinia · This contribution re-examines two Gracchan boundary stones and four more without signature, found in Hirpinia, in the narrow region between the municipalities of Rocca San Felice, Frigento and Villamaina (Avellino, Italy); these stones are well known to the scholars for the difficulty in interpreting the meaning of the acronyms engraved on the vertices. By relating the inscribed cippi to the local orohydrographic context it is possible to discern a mosaic of condiciones agrorum, originated from the work of the Gracchan tresviri in this part of the Hirpinia, between the end of 130 and the first months of 129 BC. The morphology of the lands that made up the mosaic was dictated by a via or callis (via Appia?) and by the land ownership of the goddess Mefite, which were perhaps considerably enlarged by the commissioners themselves. The centurial stone marker of Villamaina, without onomastic indications, allows us to interpret the acronyms FP CÂV on the cippus AE 1997, 380 and to include the entire area, up to the edge of the via/callis, in the pertica of Abellinum, despite the distance from the city; the reasons for the territorial extension are to be found in the management of the goddess’s patrimony, entrusted to the magistrates of the Roman colony, rather than to the Hirpinian optimates of the oppidum Aeclanum. These lands include public lands of Abellinum rented out by contract, which could have attracted tenants and magistrates from nearby cities: in light of this hypothesis, it will be necessary to reconsider the problem of the socalled municipium aliunde ignotum located in Frigento. The Gracchan commissioners couldn’t materialize the limitatio of a territory extending over 460 sq km in a few winter months, before being deprived of the iurisdictio; therefore, the centuriation was not carried out in application of the Sempronia agrarian law and the six cippi considered must be ascribed to different periods, even if close in absolute chronology.