ISic001207: Epitaph for Nemeris, a goldsmith
- ID
- ISic001207
- Language
- Ancient Greek
- Text type
- funerary
- Object type
- stele
- Status
- No data
- Links
- View in current site
Edition
Apparatus criticus
- Text after earlier editions and photograph;
- line.1: Salinas, Νεμέρις; Kaibel, Νεμέρις or Νεμέρι[ε]
- line.3: Salinas, Νυμφόδωρι
Physical description
Support
- Description
- A rectangular sandstone cippus, intact and finished on all sides, but uneven below; minor damage to the upper left of the front face
- Object type
- stele
- Material
- sandstone
- Condition
- No data
- Dimensions
- height: 40 cm, width: 31 cm, depth: 14.5 cm
Inscription
- Layout
- Five lines of Greek letters, centred on the stone
- Text condition
- No data
- Lettering
-
- Letter heights
- Lines 1-5: 30-45mm
- Interlinear heights
- Interlineation line 1 to 2: mm
Provenance
- Place of origin
- Abacaenum
- Provenance found
- From the area of the necropolis in contrada Cardusa
- Map
Current location
- Place
- Palermo, Italy
- Repository
- Museo Archeologico Regionale Antonino Salinas , 8706
- Autopsy
- Palermo Museum, July 2017
- Map
Date
2nd century BCE(?) (200 BC – 100 BC)- Evidence
- No data
Text type
commentary
The reading of line 1 is problematic; traces of a letter seem to be visible after the final iota, but whether a sigma or a faint epsilon very uncertain. Manni Piraino rejected the presence of a letter and argued for a vocative in -i from forms (common in Sicily) in -is; on the other hand, the vocative Νεμέριε from the well attested Greek rendering Νεμέριος is straightforward. A Numerius Granonius, N.f. Cat(ulus?), domo Luceria, who served in Roman legions of the mid-C1 BC is known from an Athenian inscription (CIL 1 (2).791). Manni Piraino (in IGPalermo) dates this inscription to the C2 AD, apparently on the basis of the nomenclature and assumptions about the letter forms. The principal area of the necropolis, however, is archaeologically Hellenistic (and not later than the early C2 BC), and only a single inscription from the general area of Tripi (the Latin fragment, ISic 0623) is certainly from the imperial period. There is nothing about the letter forms themselves which requires an imperial date (closed omega with variable forms is common in the later Hellenistic, and the absence of any lunate forms is notable), so the argument appears to rest on historical assumptions regarding the Italic/Roman elements in the name, which do not follow proper Roman conventions regarding e.g. filiation, and employ Sicilian Greek orthography. In other words, an earlier, rather than a later date seems more plausible, of the second century BC?
Bibliography
- Digital editions
- Printed editions
- Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, Istituto nazionale di archeologia e storia dell’arte (Italy), e Reale Accademia d’Italia, «Notizie degli scavi di antichità», Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità, 1876, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1646037, at 464 no.a
- F. Bechtel et al., Sammlung der griechischen Dialekt-Inschriften, 4 vols (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1884), at 5208b
- 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 14.0382b
- M.T. Manni Piraino, Iscrizioni greche lapidarie del Museo di Palermo, Sikelika 6 (Palermo: S. F. Flaccovio, 1973), at 126
- M.T. Manni Piraino, « Contribution Épigraphique à l’Étude de l’esclavage en Sicile », in Actes du Colloque 1973 sur l’Esclavage (Besançon: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté, 1976), 385‑97, https://www.persee.fr/doc/girea_0000-0000_1976_act_4_1_946, at 392
- Giacomo Manganaro, «La Sicilia da Sesto Pompeo a Diocleziano», Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt 2.11.1 (1988): 3–89, at 20 n.73
- Girolamo Sofia, Abakainon. Nella dimora di Ade. La necropoli in contrada Cardusa a Tripi (Terme Vigliatore (ME): Giambra editore, 2015), at 108 fig.113
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
- 1/19/2021