Slab with epitaph in verse

Photogallery

Slab with epitaph in verse
Slab with epitaph in verse
Section XVI. Christian inscriptions, II

Those who buried little Constantia (her parents?) chose not a common epitaph, but rather an epitaph in verse, with the typical sepulchral formulas replaced by elegant and moving phrases. The tomb “talks” to us, providing the age of the deceased not with vixit annis VI, “lived for 6 years”, but with ter binas hiemes … peregit, “she spent three double winters”, combined with the expression festina luce, “with fast, ephemeral light”, alluding to the transience of life. It then describes the girl who “seeks for herself this home for eternity” (hanc in aeterno sibi sedem ... quaerens) and arrives here (huc veniens), in this placido, “quiet”, tomb, to which her “tender remains” (pia membra) are entrusted. The concept of the tomb as an “eternal home” for the body (as opposed to the house where they lived in life), of pagan use, was inherited by Christians, but subsequently abandoned as inconsistent with the idea of resurrection.