Abstract:

Among the epigraphic production of the workshops in Tarraco, a huge series of freestanding tripartite honorific pedestals for provincial magistrates and priests stands out. These pedestals are a kind of monument carved uniformly and systematically from the late 1st century to the end 2nd century AD. Their production started with the urbanistic reform in Flavian times in the uppermost part of the city, area which evolved into the representation area of concilium Hispaniae citerioris (PHC). Also, once the ius Latii was given, a corporate image of Tarraconensis was conceived there. This image directly shaped a magnificent, uniform gallery of the statues of flamines PHC, created at the expense of the council itself. The text engraved in their pedestals perpetuated the memory of every individual and his flaminate honor, but also named explicitly his origo, which evoked communities spread throughout the territory and recently added de iure to Roman state. Most of them were far away from Tarraco, and not necessarily known by the rest of the peoples. So, the public exhibition of these city names in the honorific pedestals of renowned fellow citizens contributed to increase the collective prestige so clearly evoked in Tarraco in the aforementioned gallery. A key element on the creation of this unified image was the use of the high quality local marmor, the Santa Tecla stone. This material was quickly exported and imitated for similar monuments in other cities of the Tarraconensis, thus contributing to these pedestals from workshops of Tarraco becoming a status symbol for the local elites, as evidenced by the location of many of them in towns far away from the provincial capital, even in other conventus.