Vatican Museums

This engraved fragment of lintel belongs to one of the two copies of the dedicatory inscription of the temple requested by the emperor Hadrian to honour his adoptive parents (parentibus) Trajan and Plotina, after their death and deification (divi). The temple was located to the north-west of Trajan's Column, at the Forum of the same name; the two inscriptions would have been affixed to the entablatures north and south of the portico enclosing the courtyard that surrounded the column and preceded the square in front of the temple. It has been suggested by other scholars that the two inscriptions would have been destined for a tomb, connected to the deposition of the ashes of Trajan and Plotina at the column and the related monumentalisation of the surrounding courtyard. Another fragment found in Rome could also belong to the same dedication; it is similar in terms of support, the creation of the epigraph (bronze letters, later removed), and the nature of the text (names and imperial titles).