ISic000583: Italici honour a Roman (?Scipio)

Apparatus criticus

Text of CIL

Physical description

Support

Description: Castelli described the stone as “una gran base di pietra con macchie rosse e bianche” (1753: 150), and claimed to have studied it himself in 1744. Such a description implies the red/white breccia of San Marco d'Alunzio, of which several pieces can be found among the ancient material immediately outside the mediaeval church on the site today. No further description or dimensions are recorded.
Object type: base
Material: breccia
Condition: No data
Dimensions: height: unknown cm, width: unknown cm, depth: unknown cm

Inscription

Layout

Both Castelli and Gualtherus note that the stone had suffered significant damage to the letters. Agustín and Gualtherus report a continuous text with no gaps, but Castelli suggests that two whole lines are missing both before and after the third surviving line of text.

Text condition

No data

Lettering

Letter heights

Line 1: unknownmm

Interlinear heights

Interlineation line 1 to 2: unknownmm

Provenance

Place of origin: Halaesa
Provenance found: First reported by Antonio Agustín, c.1559 (Prestianni Giallombardo 1993a: 182 with Tav.1) as being ‘fra Tusa et Petineo et la mota di Fermo et la abadia di S.ta Maria delli Palazi alla croce’. Gualtherus (1624) described it as ‘ara crucis signo supposita bis-denis circiter passibus à templo recedens.’ It remains unclear exactly what this implies, whether at a cross standing at a crossroads immediately to the north of the site (and so in re-use there).

Current location

Lost.

Date

193 BCE (if identification of L. Scipio Asiagenus accepted) (193 BC – 193 BC)

Evidence: prosopography

Text type

honorific

commentary

Both Castelli and Gualtherus note that the stone had suffered significant damage to the letters. Agustín and Gualtherus report a continuous text with no gaps, but Castelli suggests that two whole lines are missing both before and after the third surviving line of text. Editors from Mommsen onwards have suggested emending the impossible SCHIZIAM or SC FIIZIVM of the earlier editors to Scipionem, and have then speculated that this refers to L. Cornelius Scipio (Asiagenus), who was praetor in Sicily in 193 BC (see Brennan, T.C. 2000. The Praetorship in the Roman Republic (Oxford), 484 and 838 n.55). If lines are missing after the name, these presumably made reference to the office(s) held by the individual. Inscriptions set up outside Italy by Italici, i.e. Italians resident abroad (usually engaged in commercial activity and often described as negotiatores, i.e. ‘businessmen’) in honour of Roman magistrates are common in the second and first century BC, particularly in the Greek East (e.g. at Delos). The text aligns itself with other examples of the type in using the Greek construction of accusative for the honorand (Latin would normally use a dative; on such texts, including this example, see Adams, J.N. 2003. Bilingualism and the Latin Language (Cambridge), at 649-663). If the emendation and identification in this text is correct, then it constitutes the earliest known example of such a text, and is important evidence for early Italian presence in northern Sicily (cf. Fraschetti, A. 1981. Per una prospografia dello sfruttamento: romani e italici in Sicilia (212 - 44 a.c.). In A. Giardina and A. Schiavone (eds), Società romana e produzione schiavistica: l'italia: insediamenti e forme economiche. Rome, Bari: 51-77; and Facella 2006: 204-208). The text also offers an early example of the gemination of the consonant in Latin (caussa).

Bibliography

Digital editions

TM: 491840
EDR: -
EDH: -
EDCS: 22100578
PHI: -

Printed editions

Citation and editorial status

Editor

Jonathan Prag

Principal contributor