Vatican Museums

Iugas rests in pace, in the peace of the tomb, buried by his wife Genethlia. The name of the woman is a complete transliteration of the Greek adjective γενέθλια, “of birth”, whereas that of the deceased derives from a latin word declined like a Greek noun: iugum. This can mean not only “yoke” in the literal sense (with reference to animals) or figuratively (in relation to marriage), but also the beam of the balance and by extension (along with the word libra), the constellation Libra, the scales. It is therefore natural to wonder whether the diagrammatic scale with two arms engraved on the left of the stone is an “onomastic” image, a depiction of a subject inspired by the name of the deceased in order to fix it in the memory of the reader or to enable an illiterate observer to intuit it. However, it may also allude to the Iugas’ occupation, which we do not know.