Slab with epitaph for a gardener

Photogallery

Slab with epitaph of a gardener
Slab with epitaph of a gardener
Section VI. The world of work. Professions and trades

Tiberius Claudius Tauriscus – possibly a freedman from, as the name implies, a people from Noricum (Austria) – lived 65 years, working in the horti or “gardens”. The famous “Italian garden”, which took shape during the Renaissance and which can be admired in the Gardens of the Vatican Museums and at Castel Gandolfo, perhaps restores through unknown channels the creative spirit and the techniques of the ancient work of gardening (opus topiàrium) that the Romans learned from Eastern civilizations and practiced with success. They chose and nurtured certain plant species, mainly the boxwood, capable not only of being arranged in elegant planimetric designs, but also of being shaped in the most various forms, even reproducing sequences of letters forming the name of the owner of the garden (in the same way that the coat of arms of Pope Pius XI was produced in the gardens of Castel Gandolfo). Tauriscus may have worked for a wealthy freedman of Tiberius Claudius Nero Drusus Germanicus (the emperor Claudius 41-54 A.D).