Vatican Museums

The structure of the two texts, of which the left, completed by comparing intact examples, represents the outcome of the development of a complex official informative system that emerged at the time of Augustus and developed in order to include four categories of information: 1) proper names (personal and imperial) of the individual emperors (in this case, father and son); 2) imperial laudatory titles or commemorating the submission of populations or geographical regions and the consequent acclamations made on the battlefield by the victorious armies; 3) political, civil and religious offices; 4) the genealogy of legitimate power, fictitiouslycrepresented as a parental genealogy including Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus Pius, Hadrian, Trajan and Nerva. The epigraphs, engraved on a slab cut from a base, originally accompanied statues which are now lost (there was also a dedication to Geta at the left, now missing). The identity of those responsible for the dedication is uncertain; it may have been the work of the presidents of the districts of the fourteen urban regions of Rome.