ISic000980: Epitaph for Paula
- ID
- ISic000980
- Language
- Ancient Greek
- Text type
- funerary
- Object type
- plaque
- Status
- edited
- Links
- View in current site
Edition
Apparatus criticus
- The text is lightly engraved, and Kaibel's text is based upon a cursory autopsy by Mommsen ('Descripsit festinans, ut ipse ait, Mommsen'); and many of the corrections gaps or other omissions in Kaibel's text are in fact not a true reflection of what is on the stone (see already the better, but previously unpublished, reading of Orsi). ;
- line.2: Kaibel: ΖΗΙΑΣ; Orsi: ΖΗΓΑΕ.
- line.3: Kaibel: ΛΝΕΛΙΙ; Orsi: ΑΝΕΑΥΤΕ
- line.4: Kaibel: bΙΟΝ; Kaibel: ΚΑΛ////
- line.5: Kaibel: ·Τ//ΠΑ
- line.6: Kaibel: ΑΡΙΟ\ΙΟΥΡΙΤΗ////; Orsi: ΑΡΤΑΛΟΥΡΙΟΥ; Ferrua: ΑΡΤΑΒΟΥΡΙΟΥ
- line.7: Orsi: ΑΜΠΡΟΤΑΤΩΝ
Physical description
Support
- Description
- A tablet of white limestone, intact on all four sides, roughly chiselled on the reverse. Traces of plaster on the edges.
- Object type
- plaque
- Material
- limestone
- Condition
- complete
- Dimensions
- height: 24 cm, width: 35.5 cm, depth: 5 cm
Inscription
- Layout
- Seven lines of Greek letters, with traces of red paint. Lines 1-3 are more formally / monumentally carved, from line four onwards the carving is lighter and less carefully laid out, rising to the right.
- Text condition
- complete
- Technique
- chiselled
- Pigment
- Rubrication, red coloured
- Lettering
Simple, thinly incised letters without serfis or terminations. The letters become increasingly ireregular and variable in the final lines. Alpha has striaght bar but also broken and oblique bar; beta has closed roughly equal eyes; Epsilon is quadrate with equal length bars; Zeta is Z in form but irregular; theta is ovoid with full straight bar; kappa has shorter arms; omicron mostly slightly smaller than other letters; sigma is lunate but square in form, lower bar slanting downwards, except for the irregular curved instance end of line 2; omega is in the form of a w, but formed entirely of straight lines and right angles. interlineation is highly irregular throughout.
- Letter heights
- Line 1-3: 15-26mm
- Line 4-7: 10-22mm
- Interlinear heights
- Interlineation line 1 to 7: 0-17mm
Provenance
- Place of origin
- Syracusae
- Provenance found
- From the , date of discovery not recorded (already in the inventory as of 1885).
- Map
Current location
- Place
- Siracusa, Italy
- Repository
- Museo Archeologico Regionale Paolo Orsi , 100
- Autopsy
- Prag, 2018-09-10
- Map
Date
427 CE (cos. date) (AD 427 - AD 427)- Evidence
- internal-date
Text type
commentary
The text was also seen and transcribed by Orsi in the first of his Taccuini, in later 1888. Ferrua already correctly read the name of the consul of 427 CE in line 6 (PLRE II, Ardabur 3), observing that the variant in Arta- is well attested (for Latin Ardabur, Greek Ἀρδαβούριος).
Bibliography
- Digital editions
- TM: 492606
- EDR: -
- EDH: -
- EDCS: 39102133
- PHI: 140457
- Printed editions
- G. Kaibel, Inscriptiones Graecae Siciliae et Italiae, additis graecis Galliae Hispaniae, Britanniae, Germaniae inscriptionibus, Inscriptiones Graecae consilio et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Regiae Borussicae Editae. Volumen XIV., XIV (Berlin: Georgius Reimerus, 1890), at 159
- ‘Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum’, Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, 1923, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1607583, at 36.0875
- C. Wessel, Inscriptiones Graecae Christianae Veteres Occidentis, Inscriptiones Christianae Italiae (Bari: Edipuglia, 1989), at 675
- Paolo Orsi, I Taccuini. I. Riproduzione anastatica e trascrizione dei Taccuini 1-4, a c. di Gioconda Lamagna e Giuseppina Monterosso, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Monumenti Antichi. Serie Miscellanea 20 (Rome: Giorgio Bretschneider Editore, 2018), at Tacc. 1, p. 78
- Discussion
Citation and editorial status
- Editor
- Jonathan Prag
- Principal contributor
- Jonathan Prag
- Contributors
- Last revision
- 7/24/2025