ISic001620: I.Sicily inscription 001620

Apparatus criticus

• The beginning of each line is supplied from a C17 record of the inscription. The end of each line is supplied from the parallel copy, ISic 2816.;
• 3: The right hand hasta of the mu is visible.
  
• 4: The iota is just visible along the left-hand edge of the front of the stone.

Physical description

Support

Description

Large irregular limestone block, cut and smoothed on the front face for an inscription, top and bottom smooth, with the back surface left irregular. There is later recutting of the stone on the left and right-hand sides, see history of the inscription's discovery below.

Object type

Block

Material

limestone

Condition

damaged

Dimensions

height: 50 cm, width: 125 cm, depth: 45 cm

Inscription

Layout

The inscription has five lines of text, damaged on both the left-hand and right-hand sides. Line 3 has no damage to the right-hand side and appears to have only one letter missing from the left-hand side, suggesting that the text was centred on the field.

Text condition

incomplete

Lettering

Letter heights

Lines 1-5: 50-60mm

Interlinear heights

Interlineation line 1 to 2: mm

Provenance

Place of origin

Messana

Provenance found

The inscription was originally found in 1612 or 1613 near an old tower in the Giudecca area of Messina, and was recorded by G. Buonfiglio Costanzo. By 1624, when it was recorded by G. Gualtherus, the front left-hand corner of the stone had been cut away. The right-hand edge of the stone was cut away at some later date. The inscription was rediscovered in 1755 and mentioned by Caio Domenico Gallo. It was found again at the beginning of the twentieth century, built into a wall at Via Cárdines 152, and was moved to the Museo Regionale di Messina in 1909. For more information on the history of the discovery of the inscription, see Crawford (2011) and Crawford ().

Current location

Place

Messina, Italy

Repository

Museo regionale interdisciplinare di Messina , A2030

Autopsy

MacDonald 2014-09-20

Map

Date

Evidence

No data

Text type

dedication

commentary

There is another extant copy of this inscription (ISic002816), which supplies the text missing from the right-hand side. Only the right-hand part of the other copy survives: the left-hand part of ISic002816, which was destroyed, is known from a seventeenth-century record of the text, and so this can be used to help restore the missing text from the left-hand edge of ISic001620, which is also known from the initial report of it in Buonfiglio Costanzo 1613. Crawford (2011) states that the two inscriptions were ‘probably from a wall, perhaps either side of a gate’. Rix (2002) reports a third copy of this text, Me 3, but this third inscription does not exist: the text of Rix’s Me 3 has its origins in a faulty recording of what is actually ISic001620.

The text is written in the adapted Ionic Greek alphabet which was usually employed to write Oscan in Lucania and Bruttium from around the fourth to the first centuries BC.

The personal names are written in the normal Oscan style, with a praenomen and nomen, plus the genitive of the father’s praenomen (without a word for ‘son’). Cf. the syntax of ISic001623.

The spellings of ουπσενς (which does not use psi) and μεδδειξ (which uses xi rather than kappa+sigma) may be indicative of orthographic differences between Oscan at Messana and Oscan written in the Greek alphabet in Lucania and Bruttium (McDonald 2015: 91). The spelling νιυ- (rather than νυ-, as ususually found in Lucania and Bruttium) in the personal name νιυμδιηις may also show different orthographic practices at Messina, and may show influence from spelling norms in Oscan alphabet used in Campania and Samnium (Zair 2016 138-9). Cf. ISicoo1621.

The Greek god name Apollo is borrowed into Oscan as αππελλουνηι, as elsewhere in Oscan – cf. appelluneís at Pompeii. This indicates a borrowing of the Doric form Απελλων rather than the Ionic Απολλων.

Bibliography

Digital editions

• TM: 171040
• EDR: -
• EDH: -
• EDCS: -
• PHI: -

Printed editions

• Gioseppe Buonfiglio Costanzo, Dell’historia Siciliana terza parte (Messina: Pietro Brea, 1613), https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=IVrMOzw8HMoC, at 135
• G. Gualtherus, Siciliæ obiacentium insular. et Bruttiorum antiquæ tabulæ, cum animadversionib (Messanae: apvd Petrvs Bream, 1624), http://arachne.uni-koeln.de/books/Gualtieri1624, at 3 no. 7
• E. Vetter, Handbuch der italischen Dialekte (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1953), at no. 196
• O. Parlangèli, «Le iscrizioni osche (mamertine) di Messina», Bollettino Centro di Studi Filologici e Linguistici Siciliani 4 (1956): 28–38, at no. 1.A
• A. Morandi, Epigrafia Italica (Rome: «L’Erma» di Bretschneider, 1982), at 143 no. 37
• Vincenzo Orioles, «Bilinguismo e biculturalismo nella Messana mamertina», in Studi linguistici e filologici offerti a Girolamo Caracausi (Palermo, 1992), 331–45.
• Helmut Rix, Sabellische Texte : die Texte des Oskischen, Umbrischen und Südpikenischen, Indogermanische Bibliothek. Erste Reihe (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 2002), at Me 1
• M. H. Crawford, ‘The Oscan Inscriptions of Messana’, in Guerra e Pace in Sicilia e Nel Mediterraneo Antico (VIII-III Sec. a.C.)., ed. C. Ampolo, vol. 2 (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2006), 521–25, at 521-525 figs. 258-259
• M.H. Crawford, Imagines Italicae. A Corpus of Italic Inscriptions, 3 vols, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 111 (London: institute of Classical Studies, 2011), at Messana 4

Discussion

• James Clackson, ‘Oscan in Sicily’, in Language and Linguistic Contact in Ancient Sicily, ed. Olga Tribulato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 132–48, at 138-141
• Katherine McDonald, Oscan in Southern Italy and Sicily : Evaluating Language Contact in a Fragmentary Corpus, Cambridge Classical Studies (Cambridge, 2015), at 91
• Nicholas Zair, Oscan in the Greek Alphabet, Cambridge Classical Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), at 138-139

Citation and editorial status

Editor

Jonathan Prag

Principal contributor

Katherine McDonald

Contributors

• Katherine McDonald
• Jonathan Prag
• James Cummings
• James Chartrand
• Valeria Vitale
• Michael Metcalfe
• Simona Stoyanova
• system

Last revision

1/14/2022