Associations, Funerals, Sociality, and Roman Law: The collegium of Diana and Antinous in Lanuvium (CIL 14.2112) Reconsidered Andreas Bendlin 1. Prefatory remarks In 1816 a marble inscription, consisting of two columns of respectively thirty-three and thirty-two lines and one line of heading stretching across the entire marble, was discovered on private ground in the northeast of Lanuvium (modern Lanuvio), the Latin town in the Alban Hills best known for its ancient sanctuary and cult of Juno Sospita, some thirty-two kilometers southeast of Rome. 1 After one generation of relative neglect, students of Roman law, ancient history, and early Christianity quickly accepted the importance of this text for the study of Roman associations (sections 3 and 5 below), once the young Theodor Mommsen had declared it one cornerstone of his juridical conceptualization of the legal status of associative life in the Roman West (section 4). 2 In addition to whatever respectability the Lanuvium inscription gained from such exposure, its rediscovery occurred under fortunate historical circumstances: for it is no coincidence that the inscription came to be regarded as pivotal to the study of Roman collegia, and that the study of these associations came to be understood as integral to a fuller appreciation of Roman society, at a time 1 CIL 14.2112; ILS 7212; FIRA 3.35; Arthur E. GORDON / Joyce S. GORDON, Album of dated Latin inscriptions. Vol. 2. Rome and the neighborhood, A.D. 100–199. Fasc. 1. Text, Berkeley / Los Angeles 1964, 63–68, no. 196. The inscription, on display in the Museo Nationale Romano alle Terme di Diocleziano (inv. no. 1031), is reproduced on p. 296 by kind permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali – Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma, which also provided the high- resolution digital photograph. I am very grateful to audiences in Toronto and Vienna for their comments on earlier versions of this paper, and to Markus Öhler for his help. Samuel Allemang corrected the English text and improved its argumentative structure. All remaining errors are my own. 2 Theodor MOMMSEN, De collegiis et sodaliciis Romanorum. Accedit inscriptio lanuvina, Kiel 1843 (repr. Carla MASI DORIA, ed., Theodor Mommsen, De collegiis et sodaliciis Romanorum. Zur Lehre von den Römischen Korporationen, Antiqua 92, Naples 2006).