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A Group of Inscriptions from Stabiae
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 August 2013
Extract
The group of inscriptions described below was found on the former estate of the Marchesi Pellicano, near the road from Stabiae to Nocera. These stones have hitherto remained in their garden along with others published by F. di Capua, but passed in 1969 into the keeping of the Antiquarium Statale di Castellamare di Stabia. Our main concern has been with the unpublished items, nos. 1–3 and 6–8, but we have added notes on four related texts, nos. 4, 5 and 9, 10 which have not been adequately described and discussed in earlier accounts.
Nos. 1–3 are examples of a type of funerary stele characteristic of Pompeii and neighbouring towns for a short period after Luna marble became easily available. The fullest discussion of them is by M. W. Frederiksen who argues that they derived from a kind of small herm made of local stone and characteristic of the same area at an earlier period; with the introduction of marble the earlier type was transformed into the ‘silhouette-herm’—a thin slab of marble terminating in a disc-shaped projection above a narrow neck which preserves in outline only the form of its predecessors, although occasionally features such as hair are briefly indicated (as here on no. 3); the new type, too, vanishes during the Julio-Claudian period when local traditions of the sort were being swamped by more cosmopolitan influences, of which the use of marble is itself one facet. Examples of the type have already been found at Nuceria and indeed at Stabiae itself so that the new items fit satisfactorily into a context. Frederiksen's material showed that its users were usually of the humbler classes and with this conclusion too the new examples accord.
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References
1 Contributi all'epigrafia e alla storia dell'antica Stabia, RAAN xix (1938–1939) 83 f.Google Scholar, reviewed by Degrassi, A., Epigraphica i (1939) 353, 4Google Scholar.
2 PBSR xxvii (1959) 104 fGoogle Scholar.
3 Not.Sc. (1932)318.
4 Di Capua, l.c. in n. 1, 99, 103.
4a Measurements are given in metres.
5 Di Capua, l.c. in n. 1, 102, 103.
6 Cf. Colini, A. M., Il fascio littorio (Rome 1933) pl. VGoogle Scholar, the monument of Antonius Antius Lupus.
7 E.g. Mommsen, on CIL x, 1081Google Scholar; Colini, l.c. in n. 6, 66, 157; Catalogo della Mostra Augustea delta Romaniá (Rome 1938) 311, no. 16Google Scholar.
8 Precinct walls were not normally pierced by doors and were probably crossed with the aid of portable wooden ladders, see Squarciapino, M. Floriani, Scavi di Ostia, Le Necropoli I (Rome 1955) 110Google Scholar.
9 Described in a notebook in the Pellicano archive.
10 Sambon, 381, no. 1005; Head, 41.
11 BMC 1; Head, 105.
12 Cic., De Leg. Ag. II, 34.93Google Scholar: see Colini, l.c. in n. 6, 19, 52.
13 The lictors are recognisable by their fasces; on similar monuments they are often accompanied by scribae (cf. Diez, E., Die Sella Curulis auf provinzialrömischen Reliefsteinen der Steiermark in Jahreshefte xxxvi (1945) 97fGoogle Scholar. and figs. 24, 25, 26) who ranked higher but were also counted as apparitores (Colini l.c. in n. 6, 21, 22).
14 See Colini l.c. in n. 6, 39.
15 Lictors might begin their careers in youth and continue into advanced age, see Colini, l.c. in n. 6, 24 and 46, no. 6.
16 The Attis represented here is perhaps to be explained as the funerary Attis, a comparatively common subject in Roman art, probably derived from a legend, subsequently used in the theatre (so Ch. Picard, CRAI; (1955) 244) of the mourning Attis, famous for his sufferings and his death, and subsequently deified; his cult was officially accepted after the reform of Claudius and in late antiquity he was opposed to Christ because of his resurrection. Two figures of Attis also appear in the lateral niches on the monument of the Concordi at Boretto (see Aurigemma, S., RIASA iii (1931) 265 f.Google Scholar, Not. Sc. (1932) 157, 158) and on a number of other funerary monuments. Probably by this time their symbolic value was forgotten and as in the case of our Attis/Telamon figures, they were purely decorative, cf. also the figures of Attis trapezophoroi at Herculaneum and Pompei.
17 Usually placed below the inscription, see Coarelli, F., Su un monumento funerario romano nell'abbazia di San Guglielmo al Goleto, in Dialoghi di Archeologia i (1952) 57 ff.Google Scholar; Coarelli collects other representations of sellae curules, see p. 58 ff., and figs. 26, 27, 30, 31, 35; more can be found in E. Diez, l.c. in n. 13, figs. 24, 26, 27, 28; in Colini, l.c. in n. 6 and Salomonson, J. W. S., BaBesch xxx (1955) 1 ffGoogle Scholar. and idem, Chair, Sceptre and Wreath (Copenhagen 1956).
18 Among the published examples of sellae curules the closest to ours (but even more elaborate) are at S. Guglielmo al Goleto (Coarelli l.c. in n. 12, fig. 11); Verona, where there are also two lictors (Colini, l.c. in n. 6), pl. xxviii and p. 169, n. 50) and Lucca, (Museo di Villa Guinigi, La Villa e le collezioni (Lucca 1968) 48Google Scholar, no. 194, pl. 12).
19 The cushion indicates the magistrate's rank and is not put there for comfort, see Diez, l.c. in n. 13, 107.
20 For a: Altmann, W., Römische Grabaltäre der Kaiserzeit (Berlin 1905) 186, n. 254Google Scholar (in the Flavian altar of Annia Cassia); Blanckenhagen, P. H. v., Flavische Architektur und ihre Dekoration (Berlin 1940) 65, pl. 24, fig. 69Google Scholar; Leon, Ch. F., Die Bauomamentik des Trajansforums (Wien-Köln-Graz 1971) pl. 36Google Scholar, 1 and 2; pl. 45 and 53. For c: Leon, l.c. pl. 112, 2; For d: Blanckenhagen, l.c. 66, pl. 25, 71 and Leon l.c. pl. 112, 2 and 125, 3.
21 See Coarelli l.c. in n. 17, 62; Coarelli rightly observes that the representations of sellae curules on the monuments of municipal magistrates have by this time lost their real meaning and instead of being a symbol of power are meant as snobbish display of the subject's status. It may also be said that the presence of lictors is analogous and occurs ‘only when they have lost their original significance’. See Colini, l.c. in n. 6, 23, 28.
22 See Napoli, M., Il capitello ionico a quattro facce a Pompei, in Pompeiana (Naples 1950) 230 ff.Google Scholar, mainly 238. no. 4, fig. 15 (porticus post scenam in the Pompeian Odeon).
23 Cf. the VPH Painter and the Horseman Painter, in Trendall, A. D., The red figured vases of Lucania, Campania and Sicily I (Oxford 1967) 280 ff., 499 ffGoogle Scholar.
24 Sichtermann, H., Griechische Vasen in Unteritalien (Tübingen 1966) no. 70, pl. 112 and pl. 118Google Scholar; no. 74, pl. 125.
25 We are most grateful to Professor A. D. Trendall for his comments on this vase.