Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-s9k8s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-13T09:55:26.837Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Inscriptions from South Etruria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

Get access

Extract

The following group of inscriptions includes some unpublished texts found recently during the South Etruria survey and a few published ones in which additional or improved readings can be offered as a result of re-examination. Most of them are tombstones of essentially local significance, but nos. 1 and 4 from Tomba di Nerone, 5 from Casale Spizzichino and 20 from Filissano are of greater importance and interest.

I. Sites on or near the Via Cassia.

1. Travertine tombstone, damaged at the upper right corner (0·52 × 0·98 × 0·12), with schematic gable and acroteria above and a lightly and crudely incised wreath in the gable; inscribed on the exposed face, whose surface is damaged. Built into the wall of the drive leading to Via Cassia 901, which lies on the west side of the road a short distance beyond Tomba di Nerone. Recent building development revealed drainage cuniculi and other elements of a Roman building, and along the ancient road frontage there were several graves and remains of at least one mausoleum. It is very likely that some or all of the texts (nos. 1–4) were found locally.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British School at Rome 1966

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 56 note * I have to thank the Director of the School at Rome and a number of those who have been taking part in the South Etruria Survey, especially Mrs. Anne Kahane and Mr. G. D. B. Jones, for information about the stones and for photographs; Mr. J. A. Crook of St. John's College, Cambridge for discussing no. 4 with me and Mr. John Morris of University College, London for discussing no. 5.

page 56 note 1 Tertius is registered in the correct tribe for Luca and his nomen, Vibius, is attested there. A number of praetorian soldiers are known to have come from Luca under the early empire; see Passerini, A., Le Coorti Pretorie (Rome, 1939), p. 152Google Scholar and Durry, M., PW XLIV, col. 1626Google Scholar.

page 56 note 2 An indication of the good social status of praetorian recruits at this date; see Passerini, loc. cit., p. 164 f., for others who had been municipal officials or were related to such officials.

I cannot find that there is any other record of municipal aediles at Luca, though their existence might have been guessed.

page 56 note 3 Written >.

page 56 note 4 Probably Naus, C. Mamillius, centurion of cohors VII praetoria, CIL X, 6674Google Scholar = ILS 2020, in which he figures as heir to a veteran soldier who became decurion and quaestor of Antium; it seems likely that this veteran was one of the soldiers settled in Nero's colony at Antium in A.D. 60 (Tac. Ann. XIV. 27).

page 56 note 5 He was aged 21 at recruitment, a little older than the norm of 18–20 years as tentatively calculated by Passerini, loc. cit., p. 145 f.

page 57 note 1 Compare the Memmii buried in a large family tomb near the Via Cassia ‘a little beyond the Pons Mulvia,’ CIL VI, 37305 f.; it is possible that this text is a stray from the same tomb or comes from a related one.

page 57 note 2 The cognomina of husband and wife suggest freed origin.

page 60 note 1 Most of the inscriptions collected in the house and garden were published by Mr. Comfort in 1960; I have supplements and new readings to suggest in this case and in no. 6 and one unimportant piece (no. 7) to add.

page 61 note 2 VIT, VIF, VIP and VTT seem possible; the condition of the stone to the right appears to exclude other possibilities for the third letter. It has not been possible to identify the subject.

page 61 note 3 Comfort proposed Sodali] /Flaui[ali, but Flaui[… may equally well be part of the man's name.

page 61 note 4 It is impossible to calculate the line-length with any certainty. At first sight one might restore as follows:

but the combination of full forms for some titles and heavy abbreviation for others is unsatisfactory, as Mr. John Morris has suggested, and something more on the following lines may be preferable:

page 61 note 5 There is no clue to the position of this fragment; but there is a tempting possibility that it might be from the legate's title, if one stood in 1. 4, … prouinci] ae M[acedoniae

page 61 note 1 Re-examination of the stone in a favourable light confirms most of the conjectures made by Dr. Hans Lieb apud Comfort, loc. cit., n. 8.

page 61 note 2 No other instance of this symbol is known at Veii and it is extremely rare in Rome itself, cf. PW Suppl. III, col. 168 for the recorded instances.

page 61 note 3 The cognomina suggest that both men are of freed origin.

page 61 note 1 The final letter might be B or R as well as P; the letter-group suggests Pap(iria tribu), but this would normally be preceded by filiation.

page 61 note 2 Possibly from publicus or a title, aedi]li cu[ruli; but not enough survives for profitable speculation.

page 62 note 1 The last letters of the line impinge on the moulding.

page 63 note 1 The cognomen suggests a freedwoman, the nomen perhaps a connexion with the family of M. Herennius Picens, cos A.D. 1, patron of Veii, see CIL XI, 3797, 7746, 7747. For another Herennia connected with Veii, cf. CIL XI, 3213, the wife of a IIvir of the town who also held office at Nepi.

page 63 note 1 The husband's cognomen and the wife's nomen both suggest freed origin; the wife presumably descends from a freedman of Trajan.

page 63 note 2 The figure is probably X.

page 63 note 3 The figure is either V or X.

page 63 note 1 Possibly the praenomen D(ecimus), but the letter is inset and isolated as if part of the formula D(is) M(anibus) although there is no trace of an M; it may be that when the panel was in position another adjoined it to the right, carrying the M of Manibus and below it the name of the dead man, whose omission is otherwise singular.

page 64 note 1 Professor Pflaum points out to me that in an exclusively urban career such as this a posting in the second grade of ducenarial posts is what is to be expected after the praetorian tribunate (cf. the cases of T. Haterius Nepos, ILS 1338, T. Flavius Germanus, ILS 1420) and is not an oddity as I suggested.

page 64 note 2 A tombstone of a family of Caerellii found near Formello, CIL XI, 3830, and a dedication by a Caerellius at Fiano, CIL XI, 7763, suggest that Apollinaris, despite the different spelling of his nomen, may have been South Etruscan in origin, and that this panel is therefore quite likely to have come from a Veientine rather than a Roman monument.

page 64 note 1 Clearly from a funerary text.

page 64 note 1 The quality of the cutting is at variance with that of the letters; the incised line is perhaps a later addition.

page 64 note 2 There are no spaces or punctuation marks between the surviving letters here, so that the interpretation is in doubt. Marti D[eo is unlikely, both because of the absence of punctuation between I and D (which would be odd in contrast to the clear spacing and punctuation between O and P in 1. 3) and because Deus rarely appears with the name of a Roman god in Rome. More probably, therefore, we have a man's name. Martidius seems not to be attested, but Artidius is known and probably occurs at Veii, cf. CIL XI, 3829. The text can then be restored on the following lines, but since the exact line-length cannot be calculated on the evidence available—in 1. 1 there may have been filiation and tribe and even a first cognomen after the nomen—it is impossible to choose between bono p[atri and bono patr[ono in 1. 3.

page 65 note 1 This line was added after the main inscription had been cut and is poor work.

page 65 note 1 Or (Caiae).

page 65 note 1 Fratri suo fits the space best, but patri suo or patrono suo are also possible.

page 66 note 1 An idea familiar in connexion with poets, cf. Ovid, , Ars Am. iii, 548Google Scholarnumen inest illis and PW xxxi s.v. Numen, is extended to the sculptor.

page 66 note 2 The omission of a nomen is doubtless due to the exigencies of the metre. Carpus and his son were freedmen members of the imperial house, as appears from their offices combined with their cognomina and the reference in col. 1, 1. 8 to the emperor.

page 66 note 3 On the attested officials of the Mint at Rome, see Mattingly, H., Coins of the Roman Empire in British Museum i (London, 1923), pp. lvii f.Google Scholar; but as Carpus describes it his function does not quite correspond to any of theirs. The formal title Procurator Monetae is applied only to Knights; the most relevant of t known freedman titles seems to be optio et exactor auri argenti aeris (ILS 1634, 1635, both Trajanic), and was thought by Mattingly to describe the supervisor of the whole technical side of the Mint, who would also be responsible for the quality of all materials used. Carpus may have held this position, or a similar but more limited one concerned with gold issues only. Alternatively, since Statius, Silvae III, 3.105, shows that under the Flavians at least, the provision of metals for the Mint was the responsibility of the a rationibus, he may have been a subordinate in the office of that minister.

page 66 note 4 The implication that the emperor, like his servant, was prudens et doctus might perhaps suggest Marcus Aurelius.

page 66 note 5 The earliest known reference to this office is Hadrianic (ILS 1672); it remained a freedman's post until Diocletian, see PW XV, col. 655 s.v. For a very young a memoria, as suggested here perhaps by the term iuvenis, see ILS 1673 (aged 17); he was doubtless a subordinate in the office of the a memoria rathar then the minister himself.

page 66 note 6 Presumably the hero Achilles. For a similar claim to mythological ancestry by an imperial freedman, cf. Pallas, regibus Arcadiae ortus, Tac., Ann. xii, 53Google Scholar. It is perhaps worth noting that what seemed in Pallas the pretentious arrogance of a peculiarly powerful minister has here become the almost casual assertion of an official too unimportant to have left any mark on the historical record.

page 66 note 7 Bootes, also called Arctophylax or Arcturus from the brightest of its component stars, and sometimes identified with Areas son of Zeus and Callisto, is the constellation which follows the Plough = the Great Bear = Callisto. While the name Bootes should imply that the preceding constellation is identified with a plough, the participle tutatus used here suggests that the writer had in mind the Bearward following the Bear. To be fully applicable the picture should be of Bootes between two constellations which he outshines, and we may guess that the last word in col. 1, 1. 12 was Ursam and that Nymph [… in col. 2, 1. 2 refers to Virgo, the constellation which follows Bootes.

page 67 note 8 Possibly a funerary garden which was part of the monument.

page 67 note 1 The names suggest a family of freed origin. Cnome is presumably intended for Gnome.