laterculus
A laterculus was, in late antiquity or the early medieval period, an inscribed tile, stone or terracotta tabletThe original meaning of laterculus in Classical Latin was "brick" or "tile." used for publishing certain kinds of information in list or calendar form. The term thus came to be used for the content represented by such an inscription, most often a list, register, or table, regardless of the medium in which it was published. A list of soldiers in a Roman military unit, such as of those recruited or discharged in a given year, may be called a laterculus,Sara Elise Phang, The Marriage of Roman Soldiers (13 B.C.-A.D. 235): Law and Family in the Imperial Army (Brill, 2001), pp. 313, 326. an example of which is found in an inscription from Vindonissa.Duncan Fishwick, Imperial Cult in the Latin West (Brill, 1990), vol. 2.1, p. 441 [https://books.google.com/books?id=XQDjUGNtapwC&dq=laterculus&pg=PA441 online.] For further examples, see for instance Brambach's Corpus Inscriptionum Rhenarum [https://books.google.com/books?id=xMc7AAAAcAAJ&q=laterculus online passim.] The equivalent Greek term is plinthos (πλίνθος; see plinth for the architectural use).Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship (Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 331.
A common type of laterculus was the computus, a table that calculates the date of Easter, and so laterculus will often be equivalent to fasti.Jane Stevenson, The 'Laterculus Malalianus' and the School of Archbishop Theodore (Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 1. Isidore of Seville said that a calendar cycle should be called a laterculus "because it has the years put in order by rows," that is, in a table.Isidore, Etymologies [https://books.google.com/books?id=3ep502syZv8C&dq=laterculum+OR+laterculus+OR+laterculi+inauthor%3AIsidore+%7C++inauthor%3AIsidorus&pg=PA144 6.17]: quod ordinem habeat stratum annorum; Grafton, Joseph Scaliger, p. 331 [https://books.google.com/books?id=9UUP6jOQ2oQC&dq=laterculus&pg=PA331 online.]
List of laterculi
Notable laterculi include:
- Laterculus Veronensis, a list of Roman provinces from the times of the Roman emperors Diocletian and Constantine I.
- Laterculus Malalianus, a late 7th-century historical exegesis of the life of Christ from the Chronica Minora in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, drawing from the Chronographia of John Malalas and so called by Theodor Mommsen, though only a relatively small part of the text takes the form of a list (covering Roman emperors from Augustus to Justin II).Stevenson, The 'Laterculus Malalianus', pp. 1–3.
- Laterculus regum Vandalorum et Alanorum,Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores antiquissimi XIII (1898), pp. 457–60; Kleine und fragmentarische Historiker der Spätantike, volume G 6 (2016), pp. 333–79. a list of Vandal kingsJohn Robert Martindale, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 1992, reprinted 2000), vol. 3, p. xxiii. based in Mommsen's view on diplomas or, alternatively, largely on an African version of the Chronicle of Prosper Tiro.Roland Steinacher, "The So-Called Laterculus Regum Vandalorum et Alanorum: A Sixth-Century African Addition to Prosper Tiro's Chronicle?," in Vandals, Romans, and Berbers: New Perspectives on Late Antique North Africa (Ashgate, 2004), p. 163.
- Laterculus regum Visigothorum, list of Visigothic kings.Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores antiquissimi XIII, pp. 464–9.
- Laterculus Polemii Silvii, an Imperial Roman list of emperors and provinces by Polemius Silvius.J.N. Adams, The Regional Diversification of Latin, 200 BC–AD 600 (Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 252.