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A new reading of the mosaic inscription in the temple of Diana Tifatina1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 August 2013
Una nuova lettura dell'iscrizione a mosaico nel tempio di diana tifatina
Questo articolo propone un testo completamente rivisitato dell'iscrizione a mosaico localizzata nel pavimento del tempio di Diana Tifatina, che attualmente forma parte della basilica di Sant' Angelo in Formis (San Michele Arcangelo). Il tempio, situato appena a nord dell'antica Capua, era uno dei più importanti santuari della Campania in epoca romana, ed era conosciuto in tutto il mondo romano. L'iscrizione, che è gravemente danneggiata, era stata precedentemente datata al 74 a.C. e menziona, fra le altre cose, la ricostruzione del tempio da parte di un gruppo di magistri. La nuova lettura, oltre ad apportare importanti correzioni al testo per quanto riguarda i nomi degli individui e le attività per le quali questi erano responsabili, indica che il testo era stato erroneamente datato, e che in effetti appartiene ad un periodo alquanto diverso della storia italiana.
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- Copyright © British School at Rome 1997
Footnotes
1
It is a pleasure to thank those who have helped in the preparation of this article. I first saw the inscription during my tenure of the Henry Francis Pelham Studentship, which was generously awarded by the Craven Committee, Oxford, to whom I am greatly indebted also for a substantial grant towards the cost of the illustrations. I was able to examine the inscription again while Rome Scholar at the British School, and am grateful to Maria Pia Malvezzi for making various enquiries in respect of it on my behalf. I should like to thank also the editor, Michael Crawford, Andrew Lintott and Amanda Claridge for their comments; Bob Wilkins for photographic advice; Paul Flint of the Photographic Unit at the Nuclear Physics Laboratory in Oxford for his patient help in producing the three composite photographs (Fig. 3a-c), each of which is digitally engineered from five individual prints; Simon Pressey for drawing Figs 1 and 2, and especially for turning my preliminary drawings into the fine illustrations which appear as Fig. 4a-c; and above all Ed Bispham and Edmund Thomas for their generous assistance and good company on visits to the basilica at Sant'Angelo in Formis. Responsibility for any shortcomings of the article is mine alone.
The following three works are referred to in an abbreviated form: A. de Franciscis, ‘Templum Dianae Tifatinae’, Archivio Storico di Terra di Lavoro 1 (1956), 301–58 (henceforth de Franciscis, 1956); A. Ferrua, ‘Il tempio di Diana Tifatina nella chiesa di S. Angelo in Formis’, Atti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, Rendiconti 28, fasc. 1–2 (anno accademico 1954–5), 55–62 (henceforth Ferrua, 1955); and A. Ferrua, ‘Alcune iscrizioni romane con dati topografici’, in Studi in Onore di Aristide Calderini e Roberto Paribeni, III (Milan, 1956), 607–19 (henceforth Ferrua, 1956).
References
2 See, above all, de Franciscis, 1956.
3 Velleius Paterculus 2. 25.4. Velleius reported that the benefaction was recorded in two inscriptions, one attached to the door-post of the temple, and the other, on bronze, located inside. Unfortunately, neither is extant.
4 5. 12.3. This may have belonged to one of the three elephants killed nearby in 211 BC during the final battle before Capua's surrender to the besieging Roman forces (Livy 26. 5.11, 6.1-2). Among Diana's treasures was also a silver cup, which announced itself in gold letters to be ‘the cup of Nestor’ (Athenaeus 11. 466e, 489b-c).
5 Gaul, : CIL XII 1705Google Scholar = ILS 3242; Pannonia, : AE 1910, 140Google Scholar, referring to the construction of a templum.
6 CIL I 2635Google Scholar = ILS 22 = ILLRP 332.
7 CIL I 2680Google Scholar = X 3781 = ILS 5561 = ILLRP 717.
8 CIL X 3935Google Scholar. For references to the inscription before Mommsen, see de Franciscis, 1956: 306–10. For these letters see Fig. 3c.
9 Ferrua, 1955: 55–62; Ferrua, 1956: 615–19; de Franciscis, 1956: 316–22. Ferrua's text was reproduced as AE 1956, 37Google Scholar, and again as AE 1980, 233Google Scholar (with de Franciscis's alternatives noted); de Franciscis's as AE 1957, 308Google Scholar. Degrassi reported both texts in ILLRP (721).
10 Ferrua thanked Antonino Rusconi for bringing the matter to his attention.
11 Of the abundant bibliography on these texts, still by far the best item is the article of Frederiksen, M., ‘Republican Capua: a social and economic study’, Papers of the British School at Rome 27 (1959), 80–130CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I shall be treating their historical importance at some length in a forthcoming work on Roman Capua.
12 De Franciscis, 1956: 301ff. (noting that this had long been suspected); Ferrua, 1955: 55ff.; 1956: 618–19. For the podium of the temple, see de Franciscis, 1956: 314–16 and now Faenza, L. Melillo, ‘Il santuario di Diana Tifatina’, in Il Museo Archeologico dell'Antica Capua (Naples, 1995), 60–1Google Scholar.
13 Here and in what follows, each figure given for the width of a letter represents the average for all the occurrences of that letter in the inscription, since there was considerable inconsistency in letter-widths. When supplements are suggested, they are calculated on the basis of these averages, and naturally take into account also the spaces between letters.
14 Note, however, that recent excavations may necessitate a reappraisal of the design of the ancient temple shown here (see below, section III).
15 See Ferrua, 1955: 61; 1956: 618–19; de Franciscis, 1956: 322ff.
16 1955: 57; 1956: 616.
17 It is not clear what decoration there may have been associated with this border. The section of the pavement immediately above the inscription has experienced severe damage, and may originally have contained a design of some sort. Nor is it to be excluded that elsewhere in the pavement there were designs or mosaic pictures, although it seems unlikely that any of the pictorial mosaics associated with Sant'Angelo in Formis which are preserved in the Museo Campano in modern Capua came from this pavement.
18 For the reader's convenience there is a slight overlap between sections in both the photographs and the drawings. It is important to note that it has been impossible to avoid some minor distortions of appearance and scale in these composite photographs, owing to the manner in which they were produced.
19 They are reproduced together as CIL I 22948Google Scholar ‘a and b’. Their formats have been assimilated here for clarity.
20 The text here used is that of Ferrua, 1956, with the addition of [M] as the praenomen of Seius in line 2, which appears only in the text in Ferrua, 1955. His earlier text does not have the s before L.MAAMIVS in line 2, or the M before DE STIPE DIANAI in line 4.
21 De Franciscis, 1956: 317. Ferrua suggested that the object in question was perhaps an altar (1955: 60) or a cippus (1956: 616, n. 13).
22 Ferrua, 1955: 60; 1956: 616, n. 13.
23 1956: 317.
24 Of necessity, these reconstructions are rather schematic, and only in a very approximate fashion can they represent the position of the original tesserae. In general I have drawn the pieces rather smaller than the originals would have been (to judge from the seven surviving letters), and have left relatively wide gaps between them, in order to facilitate comparison with the unmarked photographs.
25 For the reader's convenience, full-stops are employed for abbreviated praenomina, filiation, and the one abbreviated cognomen (RVF.), and a space is left after unabbreviated words: in the original text, both these means of division were represented by interpuncts (each formed of a single black tessera), which appeared after every word or abbreviation except at the end of a line. For further ease of reading, a space is here also left after filiation and after the abbreviated cognomen.
26 The s has been remade in ligature with the preceding v and the following M.
27 None of the 128 or so attested Roman nomina ending in -ERIVS occur on these lists. See Solin, H. and Salomies, O., Repertorium nominum gentilium et cognominum Latinorum (second edition, Hildesheim, , 1994), 262–3Google Scholar.
28 De Franciscis, 1956: tav. 5.
29 L.I(V)VENTI(VS) L.F. RVF(VS), in CIL I 22944Google Scholar = ILLRP 708 (de Franciscis, A., Epigraphica 12 (1950), 126–30Google Scholar: it appeared as AE 1952, 55Google Scholar, lacking the first two lines; a second, badly worn, copy of this inscription was also published by Franciscis, de (‘Commento a due nuovi “tituli magistrorum Campanorum”’, in Studi in onore di Aristide Calderini e Roberto Paribeni, III (Milan, 1956), 353)Google Scholar; AE 1958, 266Google Scholar; CIL I 22945Google Scholar). The inscription gives Ser. Sulpicius Galba as sole consul, and therefore predates M. Aurelius Scaurus's taking up office as suffect (see below on line 5 for Sulpicius and Aurelius as the consuls named in our inscription). Note that in seeing an s before the supposed name L.MAAMIVS in line 2, Ferrua was presumably taking this to be the last letter of a cognomen (1956: 617; not in his earlier text (1955: 58)).
30 The name appears to be attested elsewhere only in CIL XI 6494aGoogle Scholar (from Sassina), where the alternative reading T. Rasius is suggested. I reject the reading TRAVIVS, since the apparent traces of the right-hand part of a v after the a are too far to the left, and in any case it seems that too much of the bottom part of an s is discernible for the traces of its presence to be merely fortuitous. The latter point counts also against TRAHIVS (AE 1987, 494Google Scholar = 1988, 707) and TRANIVS. The name TRAVSIVS, allowing apparent traces of v as well as s, would be too tight a squeeze here. However, TRABIVS (CIL VI 1056)Google Scholar would not be inconceivable, and might TRAISIVS be a possibility? Lingering doubt leads me to bracket the first s of TRA[S]IVS in what follows.
31 CIL I 2688Google Scholar = X 3785 = ILS 3064 (without names) = ILLRP 723a, second name (a libertus). For the association of Consii with Capua, see Harvey, P., ‘Cicero, Consius, and Capua: I. The nomen Consius and Cic. leg.agr. 2.92-3’, Athenaeum, n.s. 59 (1981), 299–316Google Scholar.
32 De Franciscis, 1956: 320–1, citing for example CIL X 6323Google Scholar and X 7121, from Terracina and Syracuse respectively (the former was the responsibility of the consul Ser. Sulpicius Galba, either the consul of this year or the consul of 144 BC). See Fig. 4a-b.
33 The bottom half of the right-hand oblique stroke of the a comes immediately after the tiles. One might also make a case for seeing very faint traces of the vn of facivndvm between 13 and 35 cm to the right of the tiles.
34 The cross-bar of the t is mutilated, but the lower part of the upright can be seen clearly at 137.5–138.5 cm. De Franciscis saw one of the a'S after the indentation. Ferrua's reading of m would be palaeographically possible for the first a of ata, but is not possible in the context of the other letters.
35 facivnda at the beginning of line 5 applies to both colvmnas and the missing noun with which ina[vr]ata agrees, but is attracted into the gender of the latter noun. Similarly, in the Capuan ministri inscription of 98 BC we have ‘pondera et pavimentum faciendum’, the gerundive taking the gender and number of the latter noun (CIL I 2681Google Scholar = X 3789 = ILS 3609 = ILLRP 718).
36 De Architectura 1. 1.5.
37 One may note that two free-standing gilded statues are later attested at Capua, one of Cicero (In Pisonem 25), and one of Campanus, L. Antistius (CIL X 3903)Google Scholar.
38 Cf. ILLRP 518; 625; 657; 665.
39 Naturalis Historia 36. 38.
40 In that case ina[vr]ata would be applying to both nouns, but taking the gender of the latter one, as is the case with the gerundive facivnda in line 5.
41 Cicero retailed an anecdote attributed to Coelius Antipater about Hannibal's desire to take a column from the sanctuary of Juno Lacinia, and his testing it to see whether it was solid gold or merely gilded (De Divinatione 1. 48). As it turned out, this particular one was solid.
42 One is that the columns were not in fact integral to the aedes, but separate, which would vastly increase the range of constructions we might envisage.
43 Ferrua, 1955: 59–60; 1956: 617. They are therefore not registered in the version of his text in CIL I 22948Google Scholar.
44 1955: 60; 1956: 617-18.
45 This is a practice found elsewhere in the Capuan magistri inscriptions (see CIL I 677 = X 3779 = ILS 3340 = ILLRP 714). In one of his two accounts of the text, Ferrua referred to seeing faint traces of an F before CONSOLIBVS (1956: 618), but these are illusory.
46 CIL I 2678Google Scholar = X 3778 = ILS 3397 = ILLRP 715. It is worth noting also the yet shorter spelling COIRAVERE (CIL I 2674Google Scholar = X 3775 = ILS 3770 = ILLRP 707; CIL I 2677Google Scholar = X 3779 = ILS 3340 = ILLRP 714).
47 CIL I 2675Google Scholar = X 3776 = ILS 3185 = ILLRP 709.
48 The correct date is suggested (without explanation) by Coarelli, F. in his article in Les «Bourgeoisies» municipales italiennes aux II e et Ier siècles avant J.-C. (Naples and Paris, 1983), 239–40Google Scholar; again, more hesitantly, at p. 387.
49 D'Isanto, G., Capua romana (Rome, 1993)Google Scholar.
50 D'Isanto (Capua romana, above, n. 49, s.v.) dated the two other Amatii attested here to some time between the early Augustan period and the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
51 See Faenza, L. Melillo, ‘Il santuario di Diana Tifatina’ (above, n. 12), 60–1Google Scholar.
52 De Franciscis's plan of the basilica (adapted here as Fig. 1) does not mark all the visible traces of this pavement. Some small stretches are to be found east of the mosaic of regular white tesserae, just on the north side of the altar — in other words, exactly over the podium extension. What needs to be established is whether these stretches are actually in situ. Further investigation may necessitate a reevaluation of the ground-plan of the temple shown here (Fig. 2, after de Franciscis, 1956: 325).
53 See de Franciscis, 1956: 333–4. Among the marbles represented is cipollino.
54 A place for burnt offerings.
55 CIL I 2680Google Scholar = X 3781 = ILS 5561 = ILLRP 717. The singular gerundives at the end suggest that the reading is not ‘loc(a) privat(a)’. It is conceivable that the statues were among the things to be made rather than purchased (the syntax is insufficiently precise to decide this).
56 See de Franciscis, 1956: 339.
57 De Architectura 1. 1.5.
58 Livy 31. 29.11.
59 Pausanias 3. 10.7; 4. 16.9-10; Servius on Vergil, Eclogues 8. 29Google Scholar.
60 Several inscriptions recorded this (e.g. CIL X 3828Google Scholar = ILS 251): see de Franciscis, A., ‘Note sui “Praedia Dianae Tifatinae”’, Rendiconti dell'Accademia di Archeologia, Lettere e Belle Arti di Napoli 41 (1966), 241–6Google Scholar; Giglioni, G. Bodei, ‘Pecunia fanatica: l'incidenza economica dei templi laziali’, Rivista Storica Italiana 79 (1977), 33–76, at p. 38Google Scholar. For suggestions as to the location of the lands donated, see Beloch, K.J., Campanien (second edition, Breslau, 1890), 363Google Scholar; Peterson, R.M., The Cults of Campania (Rome, 1919), 325Google Scholar; Rigsby, K.J., ‘Cnossus and Capua’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 106 (1976), 313–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar (at pp. 321–3, with map at p. 323).
61 De Franciscis, 1956: 322, 347–9; Frederiksen, M., Campania, ed. Purcell, N. (London, 1984), 265Google Scholar. D'Isanto, (Capua romana (above, n. 49), 19Google Scholar) was more hesitant.
62 CIL I 2635Google Scholar = ILS 22 = ILLRP 332: de manubies.
63 See, Coarelli, , ‘I santuari del Lazio e della Campania tra i Gracchi e le guerre civili’ (above, n. 48), 217–40Google Scholar, wherein he suggested the correct date for the reconstruction of the temple of Diana Tifatina (at pp. 239–40, 387); and Coarelli, F., I santuari del Lazio in età repubblicana (Rome, 1987)Google Scholar, passim. For the date of the sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste, see Coarelli, in Zanker, P. (ed.), Hellenismus in Mittelitalien (Göttingen, 1976), 337–9Google Scholar.