Bronze military diploma

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

These tablets record that in A.D. 149, the Emperor Antoninus Pius granted Roman citizenship and the right to legal marriage to discharged veterans of foreign birth who had served for twenty-five years in auxiliary units. Each veteran received a copy of the law inscribed on two bronze tablets fastened together with wires, which were officially sealed. This copy belonged to an infantryman named Dasmenus Azalus, clearly a man of Near Eastern origin.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art