Pagus Augustus Felix Suburbanus: a note on 'Sullan' Pompeii

Abstract

The epigraphic record from Pompeii attests the existence of a suburban country district or pagus with the epithet Augustus Felix. There is consensus
in the scholarship that it received its name in two stages. First it was the pagus Felix suburbanus in honour of Sulla Felix, founder of a veteran colony at Pompeii as dictator in 81 B.C. Later it was reorganised under Augustus as the pagus Augustus Felix suburbanus, a development that can be dated to 7 B.C. This note challenges the assumption of a Sullan phase and proposes that both elements of the epithet Augustus Felix date to the Augustan period. The epithet Felix is not exclusively Sullan, and it is attested in the official titulatures of a series of Caesarian, triumviral, and Augustan military colonies in Italy and
the provinces.