ISic001232: I.Sicily inscription 001232

I.Sicily with the permission of the Assessorato Regionale dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identità Siciliana - Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identità Siciliana
ID
ISic001232
Language
Ancient Greek
Text type
funerary
Object type
stele
Status
No data
Links
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Edition

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Apparatus criticus

  • Text of fragment 'a' after IGPalermo and photograph; text of fragment 'b' after Gualtherus and Kaibel, and requiring further revision;
  • b.1: Kaibel: ἔχει[ν ἐ]πόθησεν
  • b.3-4: Gualtherus: ΛΥΓΡΟΙϹ Μ . . . |ΜΑΤΑ; Torremuzza et al.: ὄμ-|ματα
  • b.4: Gualtherus: ΜΥΡΟΜΕΝϹ . . ; Torremuzza: μυρομένη

Physical description

Support

Description
The upper portion of a marble stele, of which the lower part is wholly lost. Minor damage to the upper edge, and of the surviving portion the lower right corner is broken. The stele has a moulding framing the text, parallel with the vertical sides, and in a rounded semi-circle at the top; what may be two acroteria-like 'wings' or 'horns' are more lightly incised upper left and upper right.
Object type
stele
Material
marble
Condition
No data
Dimensions
height: 46.8 cmwidth: 38.3 cmdepth: 8 cm

Inscription

Layout
Text is enclosed within a relief-carved moulding, and centred. The first three lines are smaller, compressed within the semi-circular top of the frame/moulding; the rest of the text is of uniform size.
Text condition
No data
Letter heights
Line 1: mm
Interlinear heights
Interlineation line 1 to 2: mm

Provenance

Place of origin
Messana
Provenance found
Original discovery not recorded.

Current location

Place
Palermo, Italy
Repository
Museo Archeologico Regionale Antonino Salinas , 8731
Autopsy
None
Map

Date

Later 2nd century CE (AD 150 – AD 200)
Evidence
No data

Text type

funerary

commentary

This stone has a complicated publication history, due to a combination of reproduction from earlier scholars and the various vicissitudes of the two attested fragments, of which the upper (a) was lost and then rediscovered by A. Gallo, and still survives; while the lower, (b) was seemingly lost, then rediscovered by Gualtherus, and subsequently lost again (and is still lost). Torremuzza resolved the fundamental problems of the text's history, which were then partly obscured again by Kaibel, and effectively resumed by Manni Piraino. However, the presentation of the text of (b), for which the surviving tradition rests in the transcription made by Gualtherus, is not entirely reliable at any point in the subsequent tradition, with minor points of arbitrary alteration already in the text of Torremuzza. The tendency of editors to present the text of the second fragment only according to the prosody of the verses, rather than the layout of the text on the stone increases the confusion.

Gualtherus reported two texts in nos. 22 and 28 of the Messina edition, both derived from the manuscript of Alberto Piccoli, and at the time described as lost. No. 28 is lines 1-3 of fragment (a), presented as a distinct funerary inscription; no.22 is lines 4ff of frag (a) together with a version of the text of frag (b). Subsequently, Gualtherus actually saw fragment (b) and presented a better text of this in the addenda to the Messina edition, at p.101 no.7. Torremuzza, in turn, was made aware of the entirety of the text of fragment (a), when it was found by Andrea Gallo who sent him a transcription. This enabled Torremuzza to recognise that Gualtherus' nos. 28 in fact stands as the first three lines before the text of Gualtherus' no. 22, and that the latter part of no.22 should be superseded by the version recorded by Gualtherus as p.101 no.7. The text of fragment (a) is secure, and the stone, previously in Messina and then the museum of S. Martino delle Scale (Monreale), is now in Palermo Museum; a gap of uncertain length follows line 11 of fragment (a); the text then resumes, on the basis of the transcription by Gualtherus (p.101 no.7), which has been variously amended by subsequent scholars. As Manni Piraino notes, Kaibel wrongly attributed the entire text as presented by Torremuzza to A. Gallo.

The text consists of a brief record of the dedicant, Aurelius Eutyches, followed by the typical abbreviated dedication to the spirits of the underworld and then a verse epigram recording the Cyzicene youths, drowned in a shipwreck, whom he buried. The stele itself, and its lettering is finely carved. On the basis of the dimensions of fragment (a), it is likely that the stele as a whole was approximately 1 metre tall.

Bibliography

Digital editions
Printed editions

Citation and editorial status

Editor
Jonathan Prag
Principal contributor
Jonathan Prag
Contributors
Last revision
1/19/2021