L'onomastique Romaine dans le monde protobyzantin: Quelques témoignages NÉGLIGÉS

This article discusses evidence for early Byzantine onomastics from 6th century Greek scholia referring to several Latin legal texts. The first of these scholia is to be found in the so called Paraphrasis Theophili, the only extant Greek version of Justinian's Institutes (II, 20, 29). This scholion deals with the Latin terms nomen (kyrion onoma), cognomen (eponymon) and praenomen (chrematismos), and explains the last of them by the example of provincial governors who include the names of their benefactors in their polyonymies. This remark, for which there seems to be no parallel in early Byzantine literature, is of special interest for the study of administrative and social history. The benefactors referred to in this scholion are powerful persons, known in contemporary Latin texts as advocati, intercessores, patroni or suffragatores, whose influence on the emperor may be decisive in matter of appointments. The inclusion of their names in polyonymies is, however, difficult to demonstrate on the basis of the epigraphical and papyrological evidence now available (some polyonymies are discussed in detail). The article discusses some similar phenomena in the onomastics of the late republic and the early empire, and argues that the emergence of this practice in polyonymies of early Byzantine provincial governors can best be explained by the evolution of the suffragium (sale of offices) at the end of the 4th century and the beginning of the 5th. The second scholion discussed in this article refers to a rescript of Gordian III (Codex Justinianus VI, 23, 4). The author of this scholion gives the imperial gentilicia Iulius and Flavius as examples for praenomen/chrematismos. This suggests that he has in mind the widely attested practice by which late Roman military and civil officials adopted the genticilium of the emperor and placed it as their first name. The same scholion includes the term patronymia which is, however, absent from the original rescript. According to the author, patronymia is the inclusion of ancestors' (progonoi) names in polyonymies of dignitaries (archontes). The third scholion, which refers to a rescript of Diocletian (Codex Justinianus IX, 25, 1), defines patronymia as the indication of the name of the father. As for praenomen/chrematismos, the author gives two pairs of names, Paulus Aemilius and Aelius Sentius, and adds that this had been the custom (ethos) in Beirut and Tyre. While the examples are rather literary reminiscences which have nothing to do with either Beirut or Tyre, there seems to be no reason to doubt that a certain onomastic practice, which is not easy to define, survived in these two cities longer than elsewhere in the late Roman East. The last case which is examined in this article is that of a problematic rescript by Diocletian (Codex Justinianus VII, 16, 9), which seems to consider the cognomen as incompatible with servile status. It is argued that this difficulty should not be attributed to an error in the manuscript tradition, and that the authors of Greek scholia referring to this rescript, writing just a few years after the promulgation of the Justinian Code, were aware of this difficulty. The article concludes with three appendices which study the onomastic terms kyrion onoma (and its equivalents), patronymia/patronymikon, and chrematismos.