ISic000337: Fragmentary inscription of Lucius Caelius

Apparatus criticus

• Line2: compare ISic000315
  
• Line3: compare ISic000315 and ISic000316

Physical description

Support

Description

The upper part of a large plain white marble slab. The top, left, and right edges are preserved, but only the top edge preserves the finished edge, albeit with some damage, while the left and right edges have been more heavily damaged and cut back, possibly for re-use. The rear face has a crude moulding and is finished although not polished. The slab is thicker in the middle, and so slightly convex in form. The front face preserves a 3cm moulding around the left, top and and right edges, at a distance of c.3.8 cm from the edge of the stone.

Object type

plaque

Material

marble

Condition

No data

Dimensions

height: 28.9 cm, width: 60.2 cm, depth: 3.2-3.9 cm

Inscription

Layout

The first two lines of a Latin text are preserved, within the frame created by the moulding.

Text condition

No data

Lettering

Letter heights

Line 1: 58-60mm

Interlinear heights

Interlineation line 1 to 2: 62mm

Provenance

Place of origin

Catina

Provenance found

Found in the eighteenth century in re-use in a wall in the Roman theatre of Catania.

Map

Current location

Place

Catania, Italy

Repository

Museo Civico di Catania , 321

Autopsy

Display, Voci di pietra no.11

Map

Date

Evidence

No data

Text type

honorific

commentary

Although none of the texts of ISic000337, 0315 or 0316 join together, and all show minor differences in form or material (e.g. compare the moulding on each), the text presented on each appears to be the same. A manuscript in the Vatican library records a fourth, similar fragment seen in the Museo dei Benedettini by C. Stevenson in the 1880s. The text, which may be common to all these fragmentary inscriptions, can be restored as it has been here.

The texts are probably honorific inscriptions. Marble slabs of this sort are commonly attached to a statue base or similar monument. The base itself would be made out of a different, cheaper, local stone (e.g. volcanic stone), the more expensive imported marble reserved for the inscription. The existence of multiple texts, apparently for the same person, has two possible explanations: either the same honorific inscription was repeated on all four(?) sides of the statue base or other monument; or else there were multiple honorific statues or monuments in Catania for this one individual (both possibilities are attested elsewhere). The remainder of the inscription will have included details of the rest of his career (compare the inscriptions for Quintus Atilius Severus (also of the Claudian tribe) and Lucius Rubrius Proculus). Lucius Caelius Macer is one of five duumviri known from Roman Catania.

Bibliography

Digital editions

• TM: 491546
• EDR: 139977
• EDH: -
• EDCS: 21900375
• 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 10.7053
• Kalle Korhonen, Le iscrizioni del Museo civico di Catania : storia delle collezioni, cultura epigrafica, edizione (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 2004), at 18
• Kalle Korhonen, «La cultura epigrafica della colonia di Catina nell’alto impero», in Colonie romane nel mondo greco, a c. di G. Salmeri, A. Raggi, e A. Baroni, Minima Epigraphica et Papyrologica separata 3 (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2004), 233–54, at 241-243

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

1/19/2021