ISic001854: Fragmentary epitaph

I.Sicily with the permission of the Assessorato Regionale dei Beni Culturali e dellā€™IdentitĆ  Siciliana - Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali e dellā€™IdentitĆ  Siciliana; photo J. Prag 2014-09-11
I.Sicily with the permission of the Assessorato Regionale dei Beni Culturali e dellā€™IdentitĆ  Siciliana - Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali e dellā€™IdentitĆ  Siciliana; photo J. Prag 2014-09-11
ID
ISic001854
Language
Ancient Greek
Status
edited
Text type
funerary
Object type
plaque

Edition

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Apparatus criticus

  • text from autopsy;
  • 2: Orsi: Ī£Ī§Ī•Ī”Ī•;
  • Orsi: ........

Physical description

Support

Description
A fragment of a white marble plaque, intact above, broken on the other three sides. A moulding along the upper rear edge has been chiselled off, suggesting the piece has been re-used for the inscription (rear otherwise finished smooth).
Object type
plaque
Object condition
fragment
Dimensions
height: 6.8 cm,Ā width: 12.8 cm,Ā depth: 1.7-2.1 cm

Material

Description
marble
Type > subtype
stone.unspecified > unverified

Inscription

Layout
Parts of three lines of Greek letters; guidelines also visible, observed for the first and third lines, but ignored for the second. There is a faint vertical bounding guideline on the right side.
Text condition
incomplete
Technique
chiselled
Pigment
No data
Lettering

Crudely carved plain lunate letters, fairly regular in size. Lunate epsilon and sigma, with use of ligature in line 1.

Letter heights
Line 1: 19-20mm
Line 2: 17-19mm
Interlinear heights
Interlineation line 1 to 2: 5-10mm
Interlineation line 2 to 3: 5-10mm

Provenance

Place of origin
Centuripae
Provenance found
One of 8 epigraphic fragments acquired from Centuripe by the museum, 19 February 1914 (and Orsi was unable to confirm more precisely the locale in which they were found). Currently in storage, magazzino B, cassette 13

Current location

Place
Siracusa, Sicilia
Repository
Museo Archeologico Regionale Paolo Orsi
34735a
Autopsy
Prag 2014-09
Map

Date

1st ā€” 3rd century CE (AD 1 - AD 300)
Evidence
No data

Text type

funerary

commentary

Although recording the tops of the letters of line 3 in the inventory, in the published edition in NSA 1915, Orsi declined to print anything for the final line, but the traces are clearly compatible with ĪµĢ“ĢĪ¶Ī·ĻƒĪµĻ‚. The faint marginal guideline on the right side, and the spacing / vacat at the end of lines 2 and 3 suggests that the right margin of the lettering may be preserved (the use of ligature in line 1 might further support that theory). However, if that is so, then there appears only to be c.2 letters missing from the left side, which makes restoring the name in line 1 difficult: presumably one of the handful of very short names ending in -ĻƒĪ¹Ļ‚, of which the most common in Sicily is Ī£įæ¶ĻƒĪ¹Ļ‚. The form Ļ‡ī†°ĻĪµ for Ļ‡Ī±įæ–ĻĪµ is rare in Sicily (see ISic004073 from Lipara).

Bibliography

Digital editions
  • TM: -
  • EDR: -
  • EDH: -
  • EDCS: -
  • PHI: -
Printed editions

Citation and editorial status

Editor
Jonathan Prag
Principal contributor
Jonathan Prag
Contributors
Last revision
8/12/2025