doi: 10.2143/AWE.15.0.3167473 AWE 15 (2016) 213-222 VICUS NOV(IODUNUM) AND VICUS CLASSICORUM: ON THE ORIGINS OF THE MUNICIPIUM NOVIODUNUM * FLORIAN MATEI-POPESCU Abstract This paper aims to tackle the origins of the municipium Noviodunum, epigraphically attested during the Severan period. To meet this goal some inscriptions are reinterpreted and con- nected with Noviodunum. Two different civilian settlements seem to have developed near the main naval base of the classis Flavia Moesica: one is a vicus Nov(iodunum), a civilian settlement, and the other is the vicus classicorum, the military vicus, attested by several votive altars uncovered at Halmyris. They were, it is assumed, transported from Noviodunum during the Tetrarchic period when the late Roman fort of Halmyris was constructed. It is concluded that, as in the case of the legionary fortresses, two different civilian communities developed in Noviodunum area, a military vicus and a civilian settlement. The latter was the one to receive the municipal grant during the joint reign of Marcus Aurelius and Com- modus, or during Commodus’ reign. The municipium Noviodunum (Isaccea, Tulcea county, Romania) is recorded by a single inscription, reused in the late Roman fort from Dinogetia: 1 [- - -] / [- - -]AV. / [quae]stori / municip(ii) Nov[i]/od(uni). The inscription dates most likely by early 3rd century, during the Severan period. Thus, the first editor assumed that Noviodunum became a municipium under Septimius Severus or Caracalla, based on the analogies with the municipia of Troesmis and Durostorum. 2 This assumption should now be amended, since the newly discovered fragments of the lex municipii Troesmensis show that the civil settlement from Troesmis received the municipal grant during the joint reign of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. 3 It is therefore likely that the civil settlement * This paper was written in the framework of the Project PN-II-ID-PCE-2012-4-0490: ‘“The Other” in Action. The Barbarisation of Rome and the Romanisation of the World’, financed by the Romanian National Research Council (CNCS-UEFISCDI). I thank Constatin C. Petolescu and Dan Dana for their critical reading of the manuscript and for their corrections and suggestions. 1 Barnea 1988; L’Année épigraphique 1990, 867. See also Suceveanu and Barnea 1993, 167. 2 Barnea 1988, 59. 3 Eck 2013; 2014a–b.