ISic000618: Funerary stele of Gnaeus Marcius
- ID
- ISic000618
- Language
- Latin
- Text type
- funerary
- Object type
- stele
- Status
- No data
- Links
- View in current site
Edition
Apparatus criticus
Physical description
Support
- Description
- A rectangular limestone stele with a relief on the upper half of the front face, and a two line inscription below. The stele is wider at the base, with a triangular profile.
- Object type
- stele
- Material
- limestone
- Condition
- No data
- Dimensions
- height: 58.5 cm, width: 46.2 cm, depth: 12-25.5 cm
Inscription
- Layout
- The text is engraved over two lines, on the same field as the relief above, with a border below.
- Text condition
- No data
- Lettering
-
- Letter heights
- Line 1: 60-84mm
- Line 2: 65-78mm
- Interlinear heights
- Interlineation line 1 to 2: mm
Provenance
- Place of origin
- Syracusae
- Provenance found
- Excavated in December 1922 in the
- Map
Current location
- Place
- Siracusa, Italy
- Repository
- Museo Archeologico Regionale Paolo Orsi , 43118
- Autopsy
- Display Sector D, cippi funerari
- Map
Date
late Republican or Augustan (100 BC – AD 50)- Evidence
- No data
Text type
commentary
The inscription has never been formally published, although first reported in the 1929 guide to the museum by Libertini, and subsequently noted by various scholars (see under editions). A parallel for the depiction of a plough on a tombstone has yet to be identified. Manganaro 1962 noted that the plough occurs on coinage, and in some contexts at least serves as a symbol for the foundation of a colonia (see, e.g. E. T. Salmon, Roman colonization under the Republic (1969) plate 10, with reference to a Trajanic coin). It seems more likely, in this instance, that the stone provides interesting support for the existence of a distinct, self-identifying category of Roman aratores on the island (in distinction to the commonly attested negotiatores), extensively referenced in Cicero's In Verrem orations of 70 BC. A parallel for the vocative+salve in Latin can be seen in a bilingual funerary inscription for a Quintus Domitius from Catania of similar date (ISic000348).
Bibliography
- Digital editions
- TM: 644874
- EDR: -
- EDH: -
- EDCS: -
- PHI: -
- Printed editions
- Guido Libertini, Il regio museo archeologico di Siracusa, Guide dei musei italiani (Roma: La Libreria dello stato, 1929), at 126
- Giacomo Manganaro, «Graffiti e iscrizioni funerarie della Sicilia orientale», Helikon 2 (1962): 485–501, at 499 n.72
- F.P. Rizzo, La menzione del lavoro nelle epigrafi della Sicilia antica: per una storia della mentalità, Seia 6 (Palermo, 1989), at 66-67 no.28
- 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 356 n.97
- 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 310
Citation and editorial status
- Editor
- Jonathan Prag
- Principal contributor
- Jonathan Prag
- Contributors
- Jonathan Prag
- James Cummings
- James Chartrand
- Valeria Vitale
- Michael Metcalfe
- system
- Simona Stoyanova
- Last revision
- 1/19/2021