ISic002816: I.Sicily inscription 002816
- ID
- ISic002816
- Language
- Oscan
- Text type
- dedication
- Object type
- Block
- Status
- No data
- Links
- View in current site
Edition
Apparatus criticus
- The left-hand side was partially recorded in the C17th, but can be confirmed using the parallel copy ISic001620.;
- 3: upright hasta of upsilon just visible; bottom stroke of sigma visible
- 4: Right-hand hasta of mu visible
- 5: Tip of right-hand hasta of upsilon visible
Physical description
Support
- Description
- One of two limestone blocks (the other lost), this the right hand block, subsequently sawn into two halves horizontally, for re-use as a doorstep. Upper half (inv. 239) H 34cm x W 79 cm x D 16-17 cm; Lower half (inv. 241) H 35 cm x W 94 cm x D 19 cm.
- Object type
- Block
- Material
- limestone
- Condition
- No data
- Dimensions
- height: cm, width: cm, depth: cm
Inscription
- Layout
- The inscription originally consisted of five lines of text, inscribed on two blocks set side by side. The left-hand block has been lost, and the right-hand block has been sawn horizontally into two pieces. There is a large vacat to the right-hand side of each of the five lines, and a vacat above the first line.
- Text condition
- No data
- Lettering
-
- Letter heights
- Line 1-5: 80-110mm
- Interlinear heights
- Interlineation line 1 to 2: mm
Provenance
- Place of origin
- Messana
- Provenance found
- The left-hand block was seen and recorded in 1658, in a ruined octagonal tower belonging to the College of Jesuits, which was being torn down for building work. The surviving right-hand block of the inscription was found shortly before 1815, cut into two pieces and being used as a doorstep.
Current location
- Place
- Messina, Italy
- Repository
- Museo regionale interdisciplinare di Messina ,
- Autopsy
- 2014-09-20 McDonald
- Map
Date
3rd century BCE (300 BC – 200 BC)- Evidence
- No data
Text type
commentary
The original inscription was on two limestone blocks, set side by side. The left-hand block is lost, and the right-hand block has been sawn horizontally into two halves. The left-hand block was seen and recorded in 1658, in a ruined octagonal tower belonging to the College of Jesuits, which was being torn down for building work. The surviving right-hand block of the inscription was found shortly before 1815, cut into two pieces and being used as a doorstep.
There is a parallel copy of this inscription (ISic001620). The other copy survives in more complete condition, though it too shows damage. The text of ISic002816 therefore needs to be restored partly from a seventeeth-century record of the text, and partly from comparsion with ISic001620. Crawford (2011) states that the two inscriptions the two copies were ‘probably from a wall, perhaps either side of a gate’. Rix (2002) indicates 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 ISic 1620.
The 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 spelling of ουπσενς (which does not use psi) 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. ISic 1621.
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: 171041
- EDR: -
- EDH: -
- EDCS: -
- PHI: -
- Printed editions
- 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.B
- A. Morandi, Epigrafia Italica (Rome: «L’Erma» di Bretschneider, 1982), at 141
- Vincenzo Orioles, «Bilinguismo e biculturalismo nella Messana mamertina», in Studi linguistici e filologici offerti a Girolamo Caracausi (Palermo, 1992), 331–45, at 331-345
- 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 5
- 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
- Last revision
- 9/18/2023