The Gallio Inscription from Delphi

The inscription is a copy on stone of a letter from the emperor Claudius about the affairs of Delphi. It survives in fragments found at Delphi; an early edition was published by Émile Bourguet in 1905. Much of each line is lost and has been restored by its editors, so the editions differ in detail. In the text as Oliver prints it, with restored letters in square brackets, the first two lines keep parts of the emperor’s name (Tiber[ius Claudius Caes]ar S[ebast]os G[ermanicus]), the last letters of the words for “tribunician power”, the numeral 26, and parts of the title “father of his country”. The number of the year of tribunician power is lost and is supplied by the editors as the twelfth. The word imperator before the numeral is also restored, so that the numeral counts the emperor’s acclamations. In lines 5–6 the stone has “[Ju]nius Gallio, my f[riend] an[d procon]sul”. The praenomen L. and the first letters of “Junius” are supplied, and the words before the name, “as … recently reported to me”, are Plassart’s restoration; of them only the first letter of “as” survives.

The numeral gives the date. An inscription on the Aqua Claudia at Rome already counts Claudius as imperator for the twenty-seventh time in his twelfth year of tribunician power, which ran from 25 January 52 the Dedicatory Inscription of the Aqua Claudia, so a letter written after the twenty-sixth acclamation is no later than that year. Oliver heads his text “A.D. 52” and judges that Gallio was probably proconsul when the emperor wrote. Since Acts says that Paul was brought before Gallio at Corinth (Acts 18:12), the letter ties that hearing to a year or two around AD 51–52. See Paul Carries the Gospel into Europe.