ISic000680: Fragment of a monumental latin inscription

Apparatus criticus

Text from autopsy

Physical description

Support

Description: Fragment of a large grey marble plaque. Intact on the left and above, broken on the right and below. The left edge is finished and shows traces of mortar; the top is edge rough. The rear is finished, but whether smooth or not is unclear.
Object type: plaque
Object condition: fragment
Dimensions: height: 34.2 cm, width: 48.3 cm, depth: 3.4-1.9 (left to right) cm

Material

Description: marble

Inscription

Layout: Single line of monumental letters with vacat above (170mm). A guidelin is visible near the top of the face, and to the top and bottom of the visible line of letters. The maximum space visible below is 40mm.
Text condition: incomplete
Technique: chiselled
Pigment: No data
Lettering: Fine, wide, v-cut monumental letters with elegant serifs. The A is closed at the top by the horizontal 'serif'.
Letter heights: Line 1: 125mm
Interlinear heights: Interlineation line 1 to 2: mm

Provenance

Place of origin: Tyndaris
Provenance found: Found in the area of insula IV of the city.

Current location

Place: Tindari, Sicilia
Repository: Antiquarium di Tindari , ME 28742
Autopsy: 2022-07-12
Map

Date

Monumental letters, difficult to date (AD 51 - AD 350)

Evidence: No data

Text type

building

commentary

Manganaro proposed to restore the text as a dedication to [Divo Flavio] Vale[rio Constantino], on the model of ILS 652. In doing so, he did not note that the plaque appears to be intact on the left. However, more fundamental is the nature of the text/monument and the form of the letters. A fourth-century imperial honorific in this form would be hard to parallel on the island. The scale of the text strongly implies a building inscription, rather than a simple honorific, and the fact that the left margin is intact, presumably requires that this is one of several slabs on the facade of a building, since this is unlikely to be the beginning of the text. Although theoretically possible to be a later third or fourth century CE text, the letter forms do seem to make this unlikely, and a date in the high empire (first or second century CE) seems more plausible. VALE[--] is most plausibly part of a name, and given that imperial names with this element only begin with Valerian in the 250s CE and then emperors of the fourth century, perhaps we should imagine the name of a provincial governor instead. In any case, the reconstruction and the implied date proposed by Manganaro is difficult to sustain.

Bibliography

Digital editions

Printed editions

Citation and editorial status

Editor

Jonathan Prag

Principal contributor