Inscription for the family tomb of two cavatores

Photogallery

Inscription for the family tomb of two cavatores
Inscription for the family tomb of two cavatores
Section VI. The world of work. Professions and trades

The slab contains the titulus maior, that it the main inscription placed on the façade at the entrance of the tomb constructed on behalf of Decimii Faustus and Fortunatus, for themselves, the freedmen and their descendants. The two owners, perhaps brothers, define their profession as cavator, (a word not otherwise found epigraphically, used in the text in the plural), generally understood to mean a carver of semi-precious (hard) stones, such as alabaster, cited in a passage from Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia. They had a workshop on the Via Sacra, the most ancient and important road of the Roman Forum, where in the late Republican  early imperial age numerous businesses were established, including those dealing in precious objects.