Salvete, amici Romani...
Last night, the following fell into my Inbox:
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 23:02:49 -0600 (CST)
Subject: EDICTUM CENSORUM DE NOTA IN LUCIUM MARIUM FIMBRIAM
EDICTUM CENSORUM NOVAE ROMAE
We, the Censores of Nova Roma, do hereby withdraw any Nota issued against the former citizen Lucius Marius Fimbria, who was then called a name distasteful to him, who is now known as Aldus Marius Peregrinus, and who is a thoroughly Roman person, though not presently a citizen of Nova Roma.
We condemn this misuse of a Nota to punish a citizen for a harmless prank that would have otherwise been swiftly forgotten. We condemn this Nota as an act which led to the fragmentation of the community of Rome.
The Nota is withdrawn, cancelled, annulled, voided, repudiated and despised by us. The former citizen Lucius Marius Fimbria is declared cleared of all wrongdoing, as far as this is within the power of the Censores to accomplish, and invited to return with a clean and unspoiled record.
We hereby issue an official apology to Lucius Marius Fimbria on behalf of the Office of the Censores of Nova Roma.
Having now revoked the Nota issued in MMDCCLIII, we, the Censores, now ask the Senate to officially revoke the reprimand against the former citizen Lucius Marius Fimbria.
M. OCTAVIUS GRACCHUS, CENSOR.
C. FABIUS BUTEO MODIANUS, CENSOR.
pridie Kal. Februarias MMDCCLX a.u.c.
--
Some of you will already recognize the significance of this. For the rest of you, I do have a summary of my posting on the subject of Nova Roma and the various abuses I endured there in its early years; it's in Comitia-->Restoratio Memoriae, last post dated 8 Mar 2006 (the abstract itself is from 21 Dec 2005). Other incidents are mentioned in other places, but that's the gist of it.
What the Edictum cited above means to me, to all of us, is simply this: Nova Roma is not the organization that we left five and a half years ago. I said as much to then-Consul Coruncanius in '05, not long before we experienced our own 'constitutional crisis' of sorts. It is even more true today. NR has matured as an organization and as a culture--in fits and snatches, to be sure, but nothing living and sentient grows up without difficulties.
Meanwhile, I, too, have been mending. The Societas as a whole has been mending. Quite a number of us are now joint-members of both groups...and these are some of our most productive people. I'm not a strong candidate for Nova Roman Citizenship, true; but active hostilities ended years ago. In short, amici, I'm over it.
Two Nova Roman Magistrates have had the decency to feel shame for what their predecessors did. At least one of them has felt this way for years; he said as much to the Nova Roma List two years after my departure. He and his colleague in the Censores' Office, now that they are in that position, have seen fit to do something about it--something everyone can see, something they may take a few hits on, something that now enters their body of law as a matter of record.
I extend my forgiveness, in every corner of my Roman Webspace, to the Senate and Magistrates of Nova Roma. The People of that entity have always had my goodwill...as has the entity itself. Let anyone who left Nova Roma for my sake, or who harbors resentment against Her because of me, note that in my eyes, She has made full restitution, and all charges against Her are dismissed.
In pacem, and for the healing of the Roman world,