ISic000040: Funerary altar for Quintus Caecilius Pulcher
- ID
- ISic000040
- Language
- Latin
- Text type
- funerary
- Object type
- funerary altar
- Status
- No data
- Links
- View in current site
Edition
Apparatus criticus
- Text after Rocco, controlled against photograph;
- 1: Bivona: QV[---]VS; Fiore:
- 2: Rocco: Caecilius Pul; Mommsen: CV / / PL; Bivona: cur[---]pul; Fiore: Caecilius pulcri
- 3: Rocco: cher vixit; Mommsen: / / / / IT; Bivona: [---]it; Fiore: Calactensis ter
- 4: Rocco: annis LVIII; Mommsen: AN / / / II; Bivona: an [---]II; Fiore: Ateneo Romano vixit
Physical description
Support
- Description
- A funerary altar (described as a 'base' in CIL, and as a 'cippus' in ILPalermo), with mouldings top and bottom (extending around the sides); the upper surface has a central gable with volutes to each side. Worn relief decoration on the sides (seemingly a jug on the left, a patera on the right). The front face contains a large recessed square epigraphic field within a frame (43.5 x 45 cm). The face is heavily worn, making the reading difficult.
- Object type
- funerary altar
- Material
- limestone
- Condition
- complete
- Dimensions
- height: 111 cm, width: 65 cm, depth: 45 cm
Inscription
- Layout
- The visible text is set out over four lines, with the text poorly spaced and cramped against the right margin in lines 2-4. Theoretically a first line above the visible lines is possible, given the space, but the damage to the top part of the face has removed any possible traces.
- Text condition
- deteriorated
- Lettering
-
- Letter heights
- Line 1: mm
- Interlinear heights
- Interlineation line 1 to 2: mm
Provenance
- Place of origin
- Calacte
- Provenance found
- According to the writings of a local figure, Luigi Volpe (reported by Fiore), the piece was found 'vicino al torrente ov'e eretta la chiesetta dedicata a SS. Maria Annunziata, a pochi metri dalla spiaggia', in Marina di Caronia, below modern Caronia, site of ancient Calacte
- Map
Current location
- Place
- Palermo, Italy
- Repository
- Museo Archeologico Regionale Antonino Salinas , 3541
- Autopsy
- Observed in the museum courtyard and photographed (most recently December 2024, Prag), but no formal autopsy record
- Map
Date
Roman imperial, first or earlier second century CE (AD 1 – AD 150)- Evidence
- lettering
Text type
commentary
Both the exact reading and the exact provenance of this piece are somewhat uncertain. The piece entered the museum in 1877, and was published by Mommsen in CIL and Bivona in the 1970 catalogue of Latin inscriptions. Due to some inconsistencies in the inventory records, and the corroded surface of the stone, both were uncertain of the exact provenance (whether Marina di Caronia, Tusa, or S.Agata di Militello), and of the reading, both limiting their readings to a few letters at the start and end of each line. A series of articles by Pietro Fiore, and responses by Livia Bivona and Benedetto Rocco, all in Sicilia Archeologica in the early 1970s shed further light, although certainty appears impossible. Fiore follows a local antiquarian, sac. Luigi Volpe, who records the finding of what appears to be this piece in 1840, near the church of SS. Maria Annunziata, close to the sea. Fiore in turn followed Volpe's reading of the stone, which was an ambitious rendering of the piece as the tombstone of ancient Caronia's (Kalakte) most famous individual, the rhetor Caecilius of Caleacte: Quintus Caecilius Calactensis Ateneo Romano pulcriter vixit. Livia Bivona was quick to respond in the same journal, although in a rather polemical fashion, pointing out the impossibility of such a reading. In his response, justifying his following of Volpe, and a second related piece, Fiore provided some further information, and this included reference to another funerary inscription, of a Quintus Pulcher, 18 years of age, found in the same locale (in the vallone of S. Anna, said to be very close and to the south of the same church). This second inscription was reported by another local figure, Tommaso Volpe Serra, to have been found in a funerary mausoleum, and also, subsequently, have been consigned to the Palermo museum, although no further record seems to exist of this piece. Subsequently, Benedetto Rocco undertook a sustained attempt to re-read the inscription, and although he reasonably refrained from a firm conclusion, he nonetheless noted the clear overlap between many of the details of the two inscriptions, and that it was quite possible that the two references should be merged. This interpretation seems the most plausible, not least because Rocco's reading of the text, largely followed here, offers the very obvious basis for a conflation of the two texts - and the possibilty must surely be recognised that the local priest, Luigi Volpe, writing in the middle of the 19th century, was keen to promote the status and history of his local community and to be able to display the funerary inscription of a famous writer from antiquity. On that basis, the initial reading by another local figure of the inscription as for a Quintus Pulcher was superseded, supported by the poor state of the stone, by the more ambitious one. Bivona and Fiore, notably, further debate the cause of the damage to the stone, and if one were especially cynical, one might wonder if the text was deliberately rendered less readable, after discovery, to facilitate the interpretation; this is probably excessively cynical, however, and the damage looks more like the corrosion of centuries.
The first line clearly reads Quintus. The traces are more difficult in lines 2 and 3, while the last line is undoubtedly ANNIS followed by a numeral. Rocco's reading appears sound and is almost entirely compatible with the traces, and without the use of further support, such as RTI, improvements will be difficult. At the same time, Rocco was too confident in his presentation of the certainty of his text, and in particular, his reading of the final numeral seems difficult to follow (especially in relation both to the traces of the tops of strokes visible on the stone, and the 19th-century report of XVIII).
Bibliography
- Digital editions
- TM: 491850
- EDR: -
- EDH: -
- EDCS: 22100588
- PHI: -
- Printed editions
- T. Mommsen, Inscriptiones Bruttiorum Lucaniae Campaniae Siciliae Sardiniae Latinae. Pars posterior. Inscriptiones Siciliae et Sardiniae, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, consilio et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Regiae Borussicae editum, 10.2 (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1883), at 10.7469
- Livia Bivona, Iscrizioni latine lapidarie del Museo di Palermo, Sikelia 5 (Palermo: Flaccovio, 1970), at 41
- Pietro Fiore, «Il cippo di Quinto Cecilio Calactense e la zona archeologica dell’antica Calacta», Sicilia Archeologica 4, fasc. 13 (1971): 50–53, at 50-53
- Bivona (1971)
- Pietro Fiore, «Contributo all’individuazione della zona archeologica dell’antica Calacta», Sicilia Archeologica 4, fasc. 16 (1971): 54–61, at 56-58
- Pietro Fiore, «Ancora sul cippo di Quinto Cecilio», Sicilia Archeologica 5, fasc. 18–20 (1972): 75–82, at 75-82
- Benedetto Rocco, «Il cippo funerario di “Quintus Caecilius Pulcher”», Sicilia Archeologica 7, fasc. 24–25 (1974): 73–78, at 73-78
Citation and editorial status
- Editor
- Jonathan Prag
- Principal contributor
- Jonathan Prag
- Contributors
- Jonathan Prag
- James Cummings
- James Chartrand
- Valeria Vitale
- Michael Metcalfe
- Tuuli Ahlholm
- Simona Stoyanova
- system
- Last revision
- 2/15/2025