Slab with epitaph dedicated to a papas

Photogallery

Slab with epitaph dedicated to a papas
Slab with epitaph dedicated to a papas
Section XVII. Christian inscriptions with consular dating

The anonymous dedicant of the tomb wanted a refined composition for his nutritor, “nurturer, educator”: the first three lines are in hexameters, inspired by the poet Virgil (Aeneid, VI, 83) to indicate the death and burial as a worthy end after the great dangers of life (line 2) and employing elegant expressions to indicate the possession of the tomb as a perpetua sedes, “perpetual home” (line 1) and the tomb itself (line 3) as a place of requies, “rest”, reached with joy given the burden of the years (cogentibus annis). The other three lines are in prose and contain: the formula hic positus, “buried here”, the age of the deceased (70 years), date of death/burial (consular dating with the day and month). Here the name of the deceased is finally revealed as Anthemio, and his role as an educator is reaffirmed with the word papas, which some scholars of the eighteenth century wrongly interpreted as papa, attributing it to a pontiff.