Fragment of a Bronze Military Diploma in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2011

Fragment of a military diploma, Mid-Imperial, Trajanic, 113/14 a.d.
Roman
Bronze
Overall 3 1/16 x 2 3/4 x 1/16 in. (7.8 x 7 x 0.2 cm)
Rogers Fund, 1923 (23.160.52)


Most surviving Roman military diploma (see 23.160.32a,b) belonged to army veterans. These discharge papers, however, were issued by the emperor Trajan to sailors on a warship, a quadrireme, in the imperial fleet based in Misenum on the Bay of Naples. The ship may have formed part of the flotilla that escorted the emperor from Italy to the East for the Parthian War (114–117 A.D.).


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/23.160.52