Vatican Museums

"Prectectus rests in the peace of Christ. He lived for nine years, nine months and three days. He was nurtured by God, Christ and the martyrs". This epitaph accompanies the slab that sealed the tomb of the child Prectectus (Proiectus?), buried in the fourth century in the cemetery of Marcellinus and Peter on the Via Labicana. Like many texts of the late imperial age, it is marked by orthographical and typographical errors, due in part to the influx of spoken language and in part to the low literacy levels of the engravers. The text is accompanied by a depiction of a dove and the repetition of the Christological monogram (composed of the Greek initials of the name of Christ: chi and rho). In the simplicity of this monument there is the moving affirmation of those who oversaw the child's burial, in all likelihood the parents of Proiectus, according to which the child would be "fed" with the spiritual nourishment of faith: God, Christ and the martyrs.