ISic000610: Milestone of Aurelius Cotta
- ID
- ISic000610
- Language
- Latin
- Text type
- milestone
- Object type
- block
- Status
- No data
- Links
- View in current site
Edition
Apparatus criticus
- Text from autopsy
Physical description
Support
- Description
- The original block, of the local stone, is said to have been approximately 1.5 m tall, with a maximum width of 0.46m and depth of 0.33m (so Di Vita 1955). However only two fragments are preserved (it having been broken up on discovery), both set into cement: the upper fragment (1), being max W 42 cm, max H 38 cm (face 33 cm), max D 36 cm; the lower fragment (2) is max W 32 cm, max H 27 cm across the face; the depth is uncertain, being only a piece off the front of the stone, now set into cement. A fragment is clearly missing from the left side, equivalent to a couple of letters, but the right side of the upper fragment appears original, and the top may well be also, both roughly finished.
- Object type
- block
- Material
- limestone
- Condition
- No data
- Dimensions
- height: 150 cm, width: 46 cm, depth: 36 cm
Inscription
- Layout
- No data
- Text condition
- No data
- Lettering
-
- Letter heights
- Line 1: 75-95mm
- Line 2: 55-95mm
- Line 3: 60-75mm
- Line 4: 70-110mm
- Interlinear heights
- Interlineation line 1 to 2: mm
Provenance
- Place of origin
- Corleone
- Provenance found
- Found in contrada Zuccarone, to the East of modern Corleone, by farm-workers on the southern side of a trackway (overall running north-south, but bending east-west at this specific point). Now on display in the Corleone Museo Civico.
- Map
Current location
- Place
- Corleone, Italy
- Repository
- Museo Civico Pippo Rizzo
- Autopsy
- 2002.06.30 and 2023.10.28 (Prag)
- Map
Date
252-248 BCE (252 BC – 248 BC)- Evidence
- No data
Text type
commentary
Although the date has been much disputed, there seems to be no good reason to doubt the original suggestion of the first editor, Antonino Di Vita, that it should be attributed to the activities of Caius Aurelius Cotta, consul and commander in Sicily during the First Punic War in 252 and again in 248 BCE (as argued in Prag 2006). Degrassi argued against this on the grounds of orthography, preferring to attribute it to one of the Aurelii Cotta known to have been consul in the second century BCE (and has been followed most recently in this by Kreiler 2011). However, it is implausible that any of those consuls could have been active in Sicily, while the historical context of Aurelius and Rome's military activities in western Sicily following the capture of Agrigento in 262 BCE, interior settlements such as Hippana (Montagna di Cavalli) in 258, and Palermo itself in 254 BCE, provide the single most plausible historical moment for Roman consolidation of this land route (NB Polybius 1.39.11-13). The text displays several features of interest, most notably the very early presence of gemination of the consonant in Cotta, which was the principal motivation for Degrassi's later date, but which is perhaps best explained with reference in turn to the unusual Greek-influenced nominative termination in -as, and the two together imply the influence of Greek (compare the other early instance of gemination in the Sicilian placename 'Hinnad' (= Henna = Enna) in a dedication by the consul Marcellus in 211 BCE (ILLRP 295), explained by Degrassi on precisely the grounds of Greek influence). For the likely route of the road, from Agrigento to Palermo (with this marker standing at 57 miles from Agrigento), see above all Giovanni Uggeri, La viabilità della Sicilia in età romana, Galatina: M. Congedo, 2004.
Bibliography
- Digital editions
- TM: 175816
- EDR: 074316
- EDH: -
- EDCS: 13600220
- PHI: -
- Printed editions
- « L’année épigraphique: revue des publications épigraphiques relatives a l’antiquité romaine. », L’année épigraphique : revue des publications épigraphiques relatives a l’antiquité romaine., 1888, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/630058599, at 1963.0131
- « L’année épigraphique: revue des publications épigraphiques relatives a l’antiquité romaine. », L’année épigraphique : revue des publications épigraphiques relatives a l’antiquité romaine., 1888, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/630058599, at 1957.0172
- A. Di Vita, «Un milliarium del 252 a.C. e l’antica via Agrigento-Panormo», Kokalos 1 (1955).
- A. Degrassi, «Nuovi miliari arcaici», in Hommages à Albert Grenier, vol. 1, Coll. Latomus 58 (Latomus, 1962), 499–513.
- A. Di Vita, «Il miliario siciliano del console C. Aurelio Cotta», Latomus 22 (1963): 478–88.
- A. Degrassi, Inscriptiones Latinae Liberae Rei Publicae, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1965), at 1277
- 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 11 n.30
- J.R.W. Prag, «Il miliario di Aurelius Cotta (ILLRP 1277): una lapide in contesto», in Guerra e pace in Sicilia nel Mediterraneo antico (VIII-III sec. a.C.). Arte, prassi e teoria della pace e della guerra, vol. 2, 2 voll. (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2006), 733–44.
- B.M. Kreiler, ‘Zwei Meilenstein des Konsuls Aurelius Cotta’, Epigraphica 73 (2011): 109–16.
- Olga Tribulato, ‘Siculi Bilingues? Latin in the Inscriptions of Early Roman Sicily’, in Language and Linguistic Contact in Ancient Sicily (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 291–325, at 302-303
Citation and editorial status
- Editor
- Jonathan Prag
- Principal contributor
- Jonathan Prag
- Contributors
- Jonathan Prag
- James Cummings
- James Chartrand
- Valeria Vitale
- Michael Metcalfe
- Simona Stoyanova
- system
- Last revision
- 10/31/2023