ISic003037: Building inscription of bishop Tobias
- ID
- ISic003037
- Language
- Ancient Greek
- Text type
- building
- Object type
- unknown
- Status
- No data
- Links
- View in current site
Edition
Apparatus criticus
- Text after Prestianni;
- Line.1: Τ is directly above ω in the transcription
Physical description
Support
- Description
- No description of the stone is recorded
- Object type
- unknown
- Material
- stone
- Condition
- No data
- Dimensions
- height: unknown cm, width: unknown cm, depth: unknown cm
Inscription
- Layout
- The text is presented over two lines in the transcription
- Text condition
- No data
- Lettering
-
- Letter heights
- Line 1=2: unknownmm
- Interlinear heights
- Interlineation line 1 to 2: unknownmm
Provenance
- Place of origin
- Halaesa
- Provenance found
- No data
Current location
Lost.
Date
Perhaps 7th century CE (?) (AD 601 – AD 700)- Evidence
- No data
Text type
commentary
The text is one of six that Antonio Agustín recorded as having seen in the church of S. Maria dei Palazzi on the site of Halaesa. Unlike the other five, it was not subsequently recorded by later visitors to the site (cf. e.g. Gualtherus 1624) and has not been seen or recorded since until the edition of Prestianni Giallombardo (1987). There is good reason to believe that Agustín recorded the letter forms accurately, and if so these provide some grounds for a date: the letter forms are comparable to those in the funerary inscription of Eirena (late fourth or fifth century AD) and Prestianni Giallombardo notes Syracusan parallels from the first third of the fifth century AD (1987: 303 n.24). However a substantially later date is also possible, and Prestianni Giallombardo notes firstly that the name Tobias is rare in Sicily, and likely to indicate an immigrant from the eastern Mediterranean, and secondly that there is limited evidence for a bishopric at Halaesa from the seventh century onwards. On this basis she plausibly suggests that Tobias was bishop at Halaesa in the course of the seventh century AD, and the inscription therefore records his construction of a building of some description on the site.
Bibliography
- Digital editions
- TM: 645391
- EDR: -
- EDH: -
- EDCS: -
- PHI: 332166
- Printed editions
- ‘Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum’, Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, 1923, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1607583, at 41.0776
- Anna Maria Prestianni Giallombardo, «Un’inedita iscrizione tardoantica da Alesa e il problema dell’episcopato alesino», in Hestiasis. Studi di tarda antichità offerti a Salvatore Calderone, vol. III (Messina, 1987), 295–316.
- Anna Maria Prestianni Giallombardo, «Recuperi epigrafici alesini», Kokalos 34–35, fasc. 1 (1989 1988): 362–65, at 363-365 dr
- A. Facella, Alesa Arconidea: ricerche su un’antica città della Sicilia tirrenica (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2006), at 306-307
- J.R.W. Prag e G. Tigano, Alesa Archonidea: il lapidarium, Introduzione all’archeologia di Halaesa 8 (Palermo: Regione Siciliana, Assessorato beni culturali e identità siciliana, Dipartimento beni culturali e identità siciliana, 2017), at no.49
Citation and editorial status
- Editor
- Jonathan Prag
- Principal contributor
- Jonathan Prag
- Contributors
- Jonathan Prag
- James Cummings
- James Chartrand
- Valeria Vitale
- Michael Metcalfe
- system
- Simona Stoyanova
- Last revision
- 1/19/2021