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comes a long enumeration of Roman provinces or nationes and of one Roman city³² intended apparently to emphasize the fact that the whole Roman Empire was mobilized for the purpose of combatting Shapuhr and to impress the readers of the inscription by a long list of names, unfamiliar to them. In reading this list the subjects of Shapuhr, used to Oriental terminology, may have thought that all these were conquered by him.³³

The list is an interesting and puzzling document, unique of its kind, and deserves some remarks. It represents a selection of 28 constituent parts of the Roman Empire. It is not a list of Roman provinces, or of some of the Roman provinces derived from official documents similar to the much later lists of the Notitia Dignitatum, or the Laterculus Veronensis, nor does it in all probability go back to official and literary descriptions of the Roman Empire such as the map and text of Agrippa-Augustus, the work of Strabo, etc. In some respects it is similar to that which may be compiled from the coins of Hadrian commemorating his visits to the various parts of the Roman Empire, to the nationes which are represented and named on his coins.³⁴ Like the nationes of Hadrian, such terms in the list of Shapuhr as Germania, Pannonia, Hispania, Phrygia, include each more than one province, while some others, like Lydia and Lycaonia, were in the time of Valerian not independent administrative units. 1 may add that the list of Shapuhr is carelessly put together, apparently by someone who was using documents in a mechanical way: no geographical order is observed except at the beginning of the list, there are repetitions (e.g., Asia is named twice) and among the larger subdivisions of the Roman Empire appear Campania and one city of the Pontus, Amastris (spelled Amastria). A probable solution of the problem may be as follows: that the list was compiled from documents of the military archives of the Roman fortresses and the Roman military camps captured by Shapuhr, and from oral information supplied by captured Roman officers and soldiers. As regards the documents of the military archives it has been suggested (A. T. Olmstead, loc. cit. p. 412) that the source of Shapuhr's list were "the muster rolls" of soldiers of various constituent parts of the Roman army: legions, auxiliary units, numeri (matriculae or matrices). It is known that in several military inscriptions of various character which mention individual soldiers, to the names of the soldiers are regularly added the places of their origin (origo). For the praetorians and legionary soldiers it is the name of the city of their origin, for the soldiers of the auxiliary units and of the navy usually the name of the natio to which the individual soldier belonged.³⁵ One might expect therefore that such identification marks of individual sol-

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