ISic000297: Inscribed base of a dedication to Venus Victrix
- ID
- ISic000297
- Language
- Latin
- Text type
- dedication
- Object type
- statue base
- Status
- No data
- Links
- View in current site
Edition
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Apparatus criticus
- Text of Prag based on autopsy
Physical description
Support
- Description
- A small hexagonal base, with moulding at top and bottom. An oval cavity is visible in the top surface into which the original votive statue will have been inserted.
- Object type
- statue base
- Material
- marble
- Condition
- No data
- Dimensions
- height: 37.4 cm, width: 17.3 cm, depth: 23 cm
Inscription
- Layout
- A Latin text over 10 lines, engraved on the narrow front face of the base. The engraved face is 8 cm wide by 27.7 cm high. The majority of the words are run over onto the following line, with the final letters centred, suggesting that the visual effect was prioritised over the sense of the words. The text is large and well spaced in the upper part, becoming compressed towards the end, with the final lines overlapping.
- Text condition
- No data
- Lettering
-
- Letter heights
- Line 1-10: 12-29mm
- Interlinear heights
- : mm
Provenance
- Place of origin
- Hybla Gereatis
- Provenance found
- Dug up in 1759 in the territory of Paternò (according to Torremuzza).
Current location
- Place
- Catania, Italy
- Repository
- Museo Civico di Catania , 354
- Autopsy
- Display, Voci di pietra no.16
- Map
Date
Korhonen suggests a date between the second half of the first and the end of the 2nd century CE (AD 50 – AD 200)- Evidence
- No data
Text type
commentary
This statue base is the only Latin inscription from Paternò, and is important both for its dedication to Venus Victrix (Venus Victorious) and for the reference to Hybla. This is the only dedication to Venus Victrix from Sicily, although dedications are found across the Roman Empire, especially in the northern and western provinces. The epithet ‘Hyblensis’, ‘of Hybla’ provides important evidence (but not proof) for the identification of Paternò with ancient Hybla Gereatis, although at least two cities in ancient Sicily were called Hybla. The statue was already missing when the base was found, but there is good evidence for the Venus Victrix type, principally from Roman coins from the time of Julius Caesar onwards.
Bibliography
- Digital editions
- TM: 491509
- EDR: -
- EDH: -
- EDCS: 21900332
- 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 10.7013
- B. Pace, Arte e Civiltà della Sicilia antica. Volume terzo. Cultura e vita religiosa (Genoa, Rome, Naples, Citta di Castello: Società anonima editrice Dante Alighieri, 1945), at 508 fig.137
- Giacomo Manganaro, «Città di Sicilia e santuarii panellenici nel III e II secolo a.c.», Historia 13 (1964): 414–39, at 433
- Giacomo Manganaro, «Per la storia dei culti nella Sicilia greca», Cronache di archeologia e di storia dell’arte 16 (1977): 148–64, at 153
- Giacomo Manganaro, «La Sicilia da Sesto Pompeo a Diocleziano», Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt 2.11.1 (1988): 3–89, at 67
- R.J.A. Wilson, Sicily under the Roman Empire: The Archaeology of a Roman Province, 36 B.C. - A.D. 535 (Warminster: Aris and Philips, 1990), at 292
- Giacomo Manganaro, «Per una storia della chora Katania», in Catania Antica. Atti del Convegno della S.I.S.A.C. (Catania 23-24 maggio 1992), a c. di B. Gentile (Pisa, 1996), 19–59, at 54
- Giacomo Manganaro, «Hybla Megala (Heraia) e Hybla Geleatis (Etnea)», in Un ponte fra l’Italia e la Grecia. Atti del simposio in onore di Antonio di Vita (Padova, 2000), 149–54, at 151 ph
- F. Trotta, «I culti dell Sicilia: tra Greci e Iblei», in Un ponte fra l’Italia e la Grecia. Atti del simposio in onore di Antonio di Vita (Padua, 2000), 155–60, at 158
- Kalle Korhonen, Le iscrizioni del Museo civico di Catania : storia delle collezioni, cultura epigrafica, edizione (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 2004), at 237
Citation and editorial status
- Editor
- Jonathan Prag
- Principal contributor
- Jonathan Prag
- Contributors
- Jonathan Prag
- James Cummings
- James Chartrand
- Valeria Vitale
- Michael Metcalfe
- Serena Agodi
- system
- Simona Stoyanova
- Last revision
- 4/27/2023