ISic003208: Fragment of an honorary inscription?
- ID
- ISic003208
- Language
- Ancient Greek
- Text type
- honorific; decree
- Object type
- plaque
- Status
- No data
- Links
- View in current site
Edition
Apparatus criticus
- Text based on photograph and on Korhonen's edition;
- line.1: A Α, Δ, Λ or Μ is possible before ΙΑ, after ΡΗ there could be a space or a Θ, Ο, Τ, Υ, Φ or Ψ
- line.2: Korhonen: [---ψηφί]σματι [βουλῆς(?) ---]
Physical description
Support
- Description
- Fragment of a marble plaque, broken on all sides, smooth on the reverse.
- Object type
- plaque
- Material
- marble
- Condition
- fragment
- Dimensions
- height: 10 cm, width: 10 cm, depth: 2 cm
Inscription
- Layout
- No data
- Text condition
- No data
- Lettering
-
- Letter heights
- Lines 1-2: 25-28mm
- Interlinear heights
- Interlineation line 1 to 2: not recordedmm
Provenance
- Place of origin
- Catina
- Provenance found
- Original discovery not recorded, but probably from Catania.
Current location
- Place
- Catania, Italy
- Repository
- Museo Civico di Catania
- Autopsy
- Observed by Korhonen in Magazzino superiore, Museo Civico, and photographed there by Prag 2016-05-13.
- Map
Date
1st — 2nd century CE (AD 1 – AD 200)- Evidence
- No data
Text type
commentary
Korhonen's reading in line 2 of ΣΜΑΤΙ is clearly contradicted by the stone, where Π followed by an oblique stroke (beginning lower left) is clearly visible. However, the essential reading of the word ψήφισμα remains the most plausible from the combination of letters, with the prepositions παρὰ and πρὸς the most common words to follow (the former obviously compatible with the following trace of alpha, lambda or mu on the stone). As such, the text is an important instance of an apparently public document from the early imperial period in Greek. It remains unclear what the significance of the interpuncts in line 1 may be (most commonly highlighting a numeral in such a use), but these do seem to be clear on the stone.
According to Korhonen, this is an inscription that must have accompanied a statue built by resolution of the council: on this view, it is likely that the preceding line contained not a numeral (the interpuncts isolating Ι could be ornamental), but a personal name (---]ία Ἰρή[νη) of the woman to whom the statue was dedicated, like the statue for Grattia Paulla erected in Catania d(ecurionum) d(ecreto) around the 1st cent. CE (Manganaro 1989, 172 nr. 43 = ISic000710). There are no parallels of Greek inscriptions from Catania that record the council’s resolutions.
Bibliography
- Digital editions
- TM: 645531
- EDR: -
- EDH: -
- EDCS: -
- PHI: 316202
- Printed editions
- ‘Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum’, Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, 1923, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1607583, at 54.0896
- Kalle Korhonen, Le iscrizioni del Museo civico di Catania : storia delle collezioni, cultura epigrafica, edizione (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 2004), at 43
- Kalle Korhonen, «La cultura epigrafica della colonia di Catina nell’alto impero», in Colonie romane nel mondo greco, a c. di G. Salmeri, A. Raggi, e A. Baroni, Minima Epigraphica et Papyrologica separata 3 (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2004), 233–54, at 240
Citation and editorial status
- Editor
- Jonathan Prag
- Principal contributor
- Jonathan Prag
- Contributors
- Last revision
- 6/4/2024