<論説>葬送活動からみたコレギア : 帝政前半期ローマにおける社会的結合関係の一断面

Abstract

本稿ではローマ帝政前半期に都市において盛んな活動を行ったコレギアという社会集団を取り上げて、ローマ社会の社会的結合関係の一断面を明らかにすることを試みた。対象としたのは前一世紀から三世紀までの帝国西部におけるコレギアである。コレギアの行った活動にはいくつかの種類があるが、本稿ではコレギアの葬送活動に注目した。葬送活動の痕跡を伝える史料を網羅的に収集すると二八一例の碑文が分析対象となる。ほとんどが墓碑で構成される史料群であるが、そこからコレギアの名称、被葬者の名前、被葬者と埋葬者の関係、葬送活動を規定する会則を分析した。その結果浮かび上がったコレギア像とは以下のとおりである。すなわち、家族を有さない東方出身者や奴隷出自の中・下層民が構成員となり、葬送や祝祭を通じて擬制的な家族関係を結ぶ場となったというコレギアの姿である。

How ordinary people associated with one another and formed the society in which they lived is a topic that cannot be overlooked in the study of history. But the question of how we can know about such matters during the period of the early Roman Empire remains to be answered. One way to respond to the question is an examination of the collegia, private associations, of the period. In this article, I focus on funerary activities from among the many activities that the collegia performed, and concentrate on the collegia in the western part of the empire. Although the funerary activity of the collegia has been singled out as important since Th. Mommsen and J.-P. Waltzing, it was always thought to have been an activity restricted to particular collegia. F. M. Ausbuttel strongly opposed this argument, but his analysis of the funerary activity itself lacked originality. In a recent doctoral dissertation, J. S. Perry proposed a new interpretation. He first collected inscriptions recording the funerary activity of collegia and then analyzed them. According to his study, collegia can be described as composed of people who acted either as a supplemental or substitute family for the deceased and their survivors. I agree with the proposition that the collegia behaved like a family, but Perry did not address the issue sufficiently. This conclusion is based on the fact that he only provided interpretations of the texts of most inscriptions and that his interpretation of the social status and origin of the members remained unclear. Given this background, I advance an argument in this article in the following fashion. I have made an exhaustive analysis of the inscriptions concerned with the funerary activity of collegia based on the catalogues of inscriptions made by Waltzing, T. Schiess and Perry, and thus consider what kind of people gathered in collegia, why they did so, and what significance collegia had for them. I have thereby been able to demonstrate a new aspect, clarifying the significance that collegia had in Roman society. There are 281 inscriptions (but those of the so-called domestic collegia have been excluded). These can be classified into four types: (1) plain gravestones that were erected solely by collegia for their deceased members, of which there are 174 examples; (2) gravestones that were cooperatively erected by close relatives of the deceased and collegia, of which there are 40 examples; (3) inscriptions showing graveyards that were owned by collegia, of which there are 63 examples; (4) inscriptions of lex collegii that include rules about funerary activity, of which there are 4 examples. From these source materials, I chiefly consider four topics, names of collegia, cognomina of the members, relationships between the deceased and the relatives who built a gravestone in type 2, and the wording of leges collegii. As a result, the following points have been clarified. Firstly, I have confirmed that the funerary activity of collegia was an activity seen in collegia as a whole. Regarding the status or origin of members, we can be fairly certain that the people coming from the East and people who had formerly been slaves or were near direct descendants of slaves accounted for about 70% of all the members of collegia. In respect to social class, they were below the equestrian order. They were probably not members of the unpropertied class but in the middle or lower class of city dwellers. The gravestones that were erected by close relatives of the deceased made up approximately 18% of all the gravestones. On the other hand, R. P. Saller and B. D. Shaw have already pointed out that in the case of the civilian population, tombstones that were built by the family of the deceased formed about 80% of the whole. There is a major gap between the two figures. From this, it is likely that the people who became members of collegia had lost links with their families or other relations because they had been liberated from slavery or immigrated from the East. In addition, the examination of the wording of leges collegii shows that some collegia collectively celebrated festivals that would have been celebrated among families or other relatives under ordinary circumstances. Other collegia had magistrates named Pater or mater, that is, father or mother. There was also a close relationship between family and funerary activity in Roman law. From the above, we can conclude that collegia became the venue in which members could obtain quasi-family relationships.