The Professiones of the Heraclean Tablet (Lex Iulia Municipalis)

The text relating to these declarations, though on the whole well preserved, suffers from an omission at the beginning of the first line which, while not greatly obscuring the sense, leaves the sentence grammatically somewhat in the air. In Bruns' recension it runs as follows: … ‘Quem h(ac) l(ege) ad co(n)s(ulem) profiterei oportebit sei is, quom eum profiterei oportebit, Romae non erit, tum quei eius negotia curabit, is eadem omnia, quae eum quoius negotia curabit, sei Romae esset, h. l. profiterei oporteret, item isdemque diebus ad cos. profitemino.’ The lack of concinnity between ‘Quem profiterei oportebit’ and ‘quei eius negotia curabit, is … profitemino’ is apparent. As this is not due to effacement of letters on the bronze, it must result from the graver's failure to reproduce accurately the copy before him. What stood in the archetype is almost certainly an introductory Quod in the sense of ‘as to the fact that,’ or ‘in the case of,’ the omission being due to the presence of the same initial letter in the adjoining quem. This restoration articulates the sentence, and at the same time reveals the idiomatic character of the syntax. The construction with quod is too common in the literature to need paralleling; significant as suggesting a contemporary provenance is its frequent use by Cicero in the Letters. As to its use in legal texts we may point to a near-by occurrence in v. 13 of this inscription, introducing one of the provisions with which we are dealing: ‘Quod quemquem h. l. profiterei oportebit, is apud quem ea professio fiet … ea quae professus erit … in tabulas publicas referunda curato.’ Another example is the lex agraria, cap. 26: ‘Quod quisque pecudes in calleis viasve publicas itineris causa induxerit … neiquid populo neive publicano dare debeto.’ It may also be noted that this construction early became stereotyped in the preambles of senatus consulta.