AshLI’s Hannah Cornwell and Jane Masséglia were there to deliver the paper ‘Signs, Symbols and Spaces in the Ashmolean Latin Collection’, and focused on the challenges on using EpiDoc to encode unusual texts. This is a live recording of their presentation, with slides.

Agrippina the Elder, Suetonius, Tiberius, 5.53

‘But in a mind so corrupted by lusts there was no trace of honour: Messalina’s tearful complaints were being drawn out pointlessly when the gates were broken open… that was the first moment she realized her true situation. She took the sword, and, while tremblingly moving it to her throat and chest in vain, a blow from the tribune drove it through her.’

Messalina, wife of Claudius, Tacitus, Annals 11.37-8

‘If he had come to commit a crime, Agrippina said… she would not believe it of her son, that he would order the murder of his mother. But the assassins surrounded her bed, and at first the ship’s captain struck her on the head with a club. Then, just as the centurion was drawing his sword to kill her, she held out her abdomen, crying out “Strike my womb!”, and with many wounds, she was dispatched.’

Agrippina the Younger, mother of Nero, Tacitus, Annals 14.8

The Death of Messalina, Georges Antoine Rochegrosse (1859-1938)

Dramatic Dominae

Reading the Roman historians, you’d be forgiven for thinking there was something just a little bit Game of Thrones about imperial women. If they’re not plotting to advance or avenge a male relative, they might be having dangerous affairs, or bringing their families into disrepute. Because the central thread of the histories told by Suetonius and Tacitus is the succession of emperors, imperial women most often appear as a means of helping the story along, characterising the men in their lives, or influencing their behaviour, each in her own way contributing to the historian’s explanation of how each man came to (and fell from) power.

It can be helpful to look at evidence which allows us to see the lives of imperial women on their own terms. Luckily, while searching through the smaller finds in the Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions collection, we found a collection of objects that gives us an insight into one imperial woman’s financial concerns – and it couldn’t be further from conspiracy and murder.

Roman Bricks

Roman bricks weren’t the rectangular things we think of today. Instead they were slim and square, like modern paving slabs.

The centre of the bricks were marked, usually with circular stamps giving the name of the brick-maker (the officinator), the clay-district (figlinae) and the estate (praedium) from which the clay came, and the name of the current consuls. These three pieces of information essentially amount to the brand, origin, and the date of manufacture that we still expect on our labels today.

These brick stamps become popular among nineteenth-century collectors, a way of owning real Roman inscriptions that were more plentiful and portable than carved stones. Unfortunately, to make them even more portable, the rest of the brick was often chiselled away, leaving only the stamped area. That’s why most brick-stamps in museums today have rough edges, and don’t give much idea of the size and shape of the brick they once belonged to. But at least they preserve the important names. In the Ashmolean Museum’s collection of brick stamps from Portus, the main harbour of Rome, the name of one particular imperial woman is a common sight. Domitia Lucilla Minor, the wife of Marcus Annius Verus and mother of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, was the owner of huge clay-fields and a major player in the brick business.

Portrait Bust identified as Domitia Lucilla Minor, mother of Marcus Aurelius. Found near the Forum in Ostia. Mid-second century AD. Vatican Museums, Sala a Croce Greca. Inv. 570.

Ladies and the Land

Of all the things that Domitia Lucilla Minor could have invested her money in, why did she choose a clay-field? Owning land was one of the few ways that aristocratic Romans could make money without being seen to engage in ‘trade’. Whether it was land that produced grain, or land that was mined for clay, many well-born Romans made themselves comfortable by having what we would now call a land portfolio, and employed staff to help them manage it.

Evidently, Domitia Lucilla’s clay-fields were so extensive that she could contract them out to more than one brick-maker. In the Ashmolean collection, we’ve found stamps showing several different officinatores, using the clay from the praedium of Domitia Lucilla in the middle of the second century AD:

Click to Enlarge

A Chip off the Old Block

In the particular case of Domitia Lucilla, her connection with brick-making was something she had inherited. Her family, the Domitii, were the most prominent family in brick manufacturing during the first and second centuries AD, and we find other bricks bearing the name of their clay-fields. In the Ashmolean Museum, we even have examples that seem to come from the clay-fields owned by her mother (Domitia Lucilla the Elder):

Naturally, certain successful brick-makers developed long-term business relationships with certain clay-field owners. The name and trident logo of officinator Ulpius Anicetianus, who appears on Domitia Lucilla’s bricks, also appears on bricks of her daughter, Annia Cornificia Faustina. It appears that, sometime after the death of Domitia Lucilla, in around AD 155/61, both the land and lucrative contracts that once belonged to her mother now passed to her.

This imperial woman, the only sibling of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, led a quiet, successful life, and on her death left her own two children her considerable property portfolio. Unfortunately, reverting to type, these grandchildren of Domitia Lucilla Minor were involved in a failed attempt to assassinate the subsequent emperor, Commodus, and were both murdered. But that’s another, more dramatic story…

In our third podcast, we look at an unusual funerary inscription on display in the Ashmolean’s Randolph Gallery. It was set up for a speculator, an intelligence officer who was stationed in Britain. After his service was finished, he did the intelligent thing and went back to sunny Rome, where his friends set up an inscription on his death.

To hear more about the man and his friends, and to see the stone in detail, click below.

After some clever sleuthing from classics-lovers and amateur epigraphers, we published the solution and the story behind the plaque on our blog.

Now you can listen to members of the AshLI team talk about this little inscription, from inside the Ashmolean’s Rome Gallery, in the second podcast in the project’s new series.

Click here to launch the podcast in a new window.

(c) Ashmolean Museum

Bronze votive plaque from1^st-2^nd centuries AD. H. 4.9cm, W. 7.1cm, D. 1cm. Ashmolean Museum AN2001.1, on display in the Rome Gallery.

Latin:

Deo / Herculi/ Marus tribunus / legionis XX fecit

 English translation:

‘For the god Hercules, Marus, tribune of the 20th legion, made this.’

Click here to launch the podcast.

A more detailed discussion of the plaque, with full bibliographic references, will appear in the new catalogue of the Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions, which will be freely available online before 2016.

As the shortest day of the year drew near, the Romans crossed their fingers for a kind winter and people from all walks of life made a break in their usual routine to honour the harvest god, Saturn.

The festival of Saturnalia began on the 17^th December and, at its longest, ran for a whole week until 23^rd December. It was a time for communal worship, present-giving, over-eating, decorations, silly hats, party games, and goodwill towards men, especially those divided by the strict Roman rules governing social class.

In our new version of this familiar carol, we’ve been thinking about what Saturnalia must have been like for a Roman slave, and would he would have been looking forward to at this festive time of year. Here it is, sung by some of our friends from the Oxford Classics Faculty. All together now:

VII shouts of “Io!”

The traditional greeting at this time of year was “io, Saturnalia!” (pronounced “Eee-yo” or “Yo”). Romans used it both as a greeting and as a reply, in the same way that we might use “Merry Christmas”, but much louder. It was a cross between a sound of celebration and surprise. Io!

VI sprigs of holly

Many people think of holly and ivy as Christmas greenery, but they were both popular decorations for Saturnalia, used in wreaths and garlands. Holly had a special significance as the sacred plant of Saturn, and small sprigs were given to friends as tokens. Since holly berries are one of the few splashes of colour in the winter, it’s not surprising that they’ve been an unbroken fixture in winter festivals for thousands of years.

V figurines

On 23^rd December, at the end of Saturnalia, the Roman celebrated Sigillaria. This was a day of gift-giving, exchanging expensive presents and small mementos. Even the Roman emperors joined in by giving gifts at Saturnalia (e.g. Augustus, Tiberius, and Vespasian).

Just like today, choosing the right present, and knowing how much to spend, was a tricky business. The 1^st-century poet Martial teased his friend who had “re-gifted” him with all his Saturnalia presents, which were heavy, but cheap:

“At Saturnalia, Umber, you sent me all the presents that the five days had brought you: a dozen three-page writing-tablets and seven toothpicks; these were accompanied by a sponge, a napkin, a cup, four quarts of beans and Picenian olives, and a black flask of Spanish grape juice. And also came little Syrian figs and glazed prunes, and a jar heavy with the weight of Libyan figs. I reckon the presents, which carried by eight huge Syrians, were hardly worth thirty coins in total. How much easier it would have been, without any effort, for a boy to have brought me five pounds of silver!” (Martial. Epigrams VII. 53)

But the traditional gifts, which gave this day its name, were simple figurines made of wax, terracotta or wood (“Sigillaria” literally means “Day of little figures”).

What exactly the figurines were originally intended to represent is difficult to say, and it seems that even the Romans weren’t sure. In the fifth century AD, the writer Macrobius wrote a book on the Saturnalia, in which two characters seem to have different attitudes to Sigillaria figurines. One man argues that they had a religious meaning, and that the figures stood in for the sacrificial victims once demanded by the cult of Saturn (Saturnalia, 1.11.47-9). But the other man argues that they were completely secular, and nothing more than toys for children (Saturnalia, 1.11.1).

But as inexpensive gifts which could be bought in bulk from specialist sigillaria-makers (who set up stalls at this time of year), these are just the kind of thing a slave might have been given to mark the last day of the festival.

IV knucklebones

As another marker that “normal service” had been suspended during Saturnalia, slaves were allowed to gamble. In theory, this festive gambling was never a risk to anyone’s savings, since the traditional stakes were nuts (hence Martial’s memorable advice to Varro to “lose your Saturnalian nuts” in Epigrams V. 30). But open gambling was an important part of the noise and excitement that gave the Saturnalia its special atmosphere.

Even priests joined in with the celebrations. In his poem, Saturnalia, the 2^nd-century poet Lucian has Cronos, a priest of Saturn say “During my week the serious is barred; no business allowed. Drinking, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping of frenzied hands, an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water—such are the functions over which I preside.” (Lucian, Saturnalia 1.2)

And even when the Roman Empire was officially Christian, the Saturnalian tradition of gambling was still so strongly associated with this time of year, that the famous Calendar of Philocalus (an illustrated Christian manuscript from AD 354), shows “December” throwing dice:

December, throwing dice, from the 4th century Calendar of Philocalus

So why is our slave singing about knucklebones? The small distinctive bones, usually from a sheep’s foot, were used by both the Greeks and the Romans as dice. The Romans also used the six-sided dice that we still use today, but knucklebones were a traditional alternative. Although roughly rectangular, they had two rounded ends and so could only land on one of four sides. These sides were given the values of 1, 3, 4 and 6 and, just like hands in modern poker, different combinations of values were given special names. A present of knucklebones for our slaves meant that his master was happy for him to take time off and do something he usually wasn’t allowed to do.

III good meals

Saturnalia meant large-scale public feasts at the temples to Saturn, but there was also lots of eating and drinking at home, and slaves were allowed to join in. In one of the amazing handwritten letters from Vindolanda in Roman Britain, we find one slave writing to another about a food order for Saturnalia:

“Regarding the … for the Saturnalia, I ask you, brother, to see to them at a price of 4 or six asses and radishes to the value of not less than ½ denarius.” A letter from one slave to another, from Vindolanda near Hadrian’s Wall inv. 87.748

Dining was a central part of Saturnalia, and this was often combined with the seasonal tradition of role-reversal, with masters serving their slaves for a change. If a slave was lucky, his master would give him especially good food and drink, and he would be allowed to overindulge in both.

Macrobius seemed to think that it was the successful gathering in of all this food for the winter, with slaves and master working together for the good of the household (Saturnalia, 1.10.22), that was the origin of one of Saturnalia’s most characteristic traditions: time off for the unfree.

II pointy hats

The Romans were very particular about clothing. Certain colours, styles and accessories were often reserved for particular people. During Saturnalia, it was traditional for all men, regardless of status, to wear a pointed felt hat (called a pileus). This wasn’t just a party hat. It was the hat that a male slave began to wear after he had been freed, and had become a libertus (a freedman). Our slave is given two pilei: one for himself, and one to give back to his master. By allowing his slave to wear the pileus, our master was giving his slave a temporary promotion to freedom; and by offering to wear a pileus himself, the (freeborn) master was temporarily reducing himself to the level of the new freedman, a man at the bottom of the social ladder.

This tradition was a clever way of levelling the playing field between the two men, but in fact it was a fantasy. If our slave were ever freed, he would never really be on the same level as a freeborn man like his master. He would be labelled as an ex-slave for the rest of his life, and even if he became successful, wealthy and well-known (as many freedmen did), there would still be elements of Roman life that would be closed to him. Some people in the elite classes would never mix with freedmen. Pliny the Younger, for example, in Letters 7.29, calls successful freedmen “slime and filth”.

Roman naming conventions meant that a freedman took on part of his former master’s name, and in inscriptions we find the tell-tale letter L or LIB for “libertus” (for men) or “liberta” (for women) showing who they had originally belonged to. Even on the tombstones of people who had been free for years, building families and businesses on their own, the inscriptions often still acknowledge that they had once been slaves.

Tombstone for Gaius Caninius Tertius and Caninia Tertia, both of them recorded as C L, liberti of Gaius (Caius). Ashmolean ANChandler.3.31.

There was even a hierarchy among freedmen and freedwomen, depending on who their master had been. One inscription in the Ashmolean Museum belongs to a woman who had once been a slave in the emperor’s household:

Cremation urn of Phleguse, who was AUG LIB – “a freedwoman of the Emperor”. Ashmolean ANChandler.3.78, on display in the Randolph Gallery

… and a chance to pretend that I was free

As well as the pointy freedman-hats, the open gambling and the chance to eat the master’s food, there were other Saturnalia traditions which encouraged slaves and masters to step out of their usual roles.

In an ancient precursor to the “King” at the Feast of Fools (readers of Victor Hugo and Disney fans might remember this from The Hunchback of Notre Dame), Saturnalia allowed a member of a household, even one of the slaves, to be named the “King of Misrule”. In this reversal of the usual order, the male head of the family (the paterfamilias) had to do as he was told, and someone else was allowed to wear the master’s clothes, and make the decisions.

Saturnalia was an important festival for slaves, because it was the only time of the year when they really got to enjoy some time-off. And because Saturnalia was so strongly associated with freedom, Saturn became an important god for slaves. Martial’s Epigrams 3.29, describes a man named Zoilos dedicating his slave-chains to the god to mark his new freedom.

For many Roman citizens, Saturnalia was holiday to brighten up a dark winter. But for many Roman slaves, it was both a chance to step out of their present, and to dream about their future.

Io Saturnalia, everyone, and warm wishes from the AshLI team.

Following an opening lecture from Warwick’s Dan Orrells, the teachers took part in three 45-minute teaching sessions in the Ashmolean. Dr Zahra Newby led a session on ancient art, focusing on the Cast Gallery, Rome Gallery and newly refurbished Greece Gallery. The teachers were among the first to see the new displays since they opened at the end of October.

Dr Zahra Newby leading a group through the new Ashmolean Greece Gallery

Professor Alison Cooley and Dr Jane Masséglia led a crash-course on how to read inscriptions and how they might be presented to students, using material from the Rome and Randolph Galleries. Alison took charge of the monumental inscriptions in the museum’s Arundel collection, showing how epitaphs give information about Roman families, professions and social aspirations, while Janie focussed on everyday objects, like the sling bullets from the Roman Civil War inscribed with messages for the enemy.

Alison Cooley telling the story behind a Roman ash chest of an imperial freedwoman in the Randolph Gallery

Jane Masséglia talking about the importance of Roman plumbing, in the Rome Gallery.

Dr Clare Rowan and Dr Chris Howgego gave the teachers a chance to get even closer to their material with a coin-handling session in the Heberden Coin Room. For many, the chance to hold a real tetradrachm was one of the highlights of the day.

Dr Clare Rowan explaining how coins were struck, in the Heberden Coin Room in the Ashmolean

Teachers handling Greek coins from the Ashmolean collection

Georgina Gill from High Storrs School in Sheffield, with an Athenian ‘owl’

Mai Musié, Oxford’s Classics Outreach Officer, and Jo Rice, Head of Ashmolean Education, were also on hand to remind teachers of the variety of talks, teaching sessions and even language-teaching support available to school groups.

Mai Musié, Oxford Classics’s Outreach Officer, reminding the teachers that Oxford and Warwick have a full programme of talks and events to support Classics teachers and students

As long as the Ashmolean has the right objects, Jo Rice and her team can design a session especially for a visiting school group

Following the success of the day, AshLI is now planning a similar event for Primary teachers. As for ‘demystifying’ ancient objects, the team was delighted by one teacher’s comments: ‘I run a course called ‘An Introduction to the Classical World’… I will now definitely add sessions on Inscriptions and Coins; I have previously been wary of both.’

The JACT INSET “Teaching with Ancient Artefacts”, on 22nd November 2014 was free to all participants, and travel bursaries were offered to teachers from the State sector, thanks to the generosity of Oxford Classics Outreach and Warwick’s Institute for Advanced Study. The AshLI team would also like to thank the 8 postgraduate volunteers from both universities who accompanied each group between the sessions and kept the event running smoothly.

It was a sprawling town house that anyone would have been proud to own. But every night, the sound of clanking chains and a terrifying vision of an old man, his shaggy hair crusted with filth, woke the inhabitants. With each visitation, their terror grew until, sick with sleeplessness, they abandoned the house. It was put up for sale, but no-one would go near it. Then, one day, a man arrived in town, a man famous for his rational mind. A man who didn’t believe in ghosts. Dr Llewelyn Morgan picks up the story with a recording he made especially for AshLI:

The story of Athenodoros and the haunted house comes from the turn of the second century AD, in a letter from Pliny the Younger to his friend Sura (Pliny, Letters VII.27).

Spookily familiar

The basic story – a place is haunted by a ghost who can find no peace until its bones are found and laid to rest – is a very familiar one (The Woman in Black, Coraline, and Sleepy Hollow all rely on it). It’s also very ancient. In Homer’s Odyssey XI, Odysseus meets the ghost of his comrade Elpenor in Hades, and discovers that he’s been left behind on Circe’s island. Elpenor had rolled off the roof where he was sleeping and broken his neck, and needs a proper burial.

The many faces of the Roman ghost

In modern, Western culture, ghosts are often associated with this kind of unfinished business. Set against the Christian tradition of heaven and an appealing afterlife, ghosts often need to have a good reason to be hanging around on earth when they could be somewhere better. But the Romans didn’t have just one idea about ghosts. Some, like the old man in Pliny’s story, were lemures, angry or overlooked spirits, who could cause trouble for the living. They were honoured annually with a series of feast days in May. Not surprisingly, lemures mostly appear in Latin literature (e.g. Ovid’s Fasti 5), since they tend to make good stories. Others ghosts were members of the natural, and ever-increasing band of dead ancestors and close relatives, who functioned as guiding and protective forces in Roman daily life. These spirits, the manes, were imagined as being in or under the earth, and were celebrated with a nine-day festival, the Parentalia, in February, and were often described as gods (di). The distinction between gods and protective spirits wasn’t one which the Romans would have worried too much about.

‘Dis Manibus’

It’s the assembled ranks of this second type of ghost, the ancestor-spirit, which are extremely common in Latin inscriptions. Roman tombstones often open with two letters: DM, short for dis manibus – ‘To the spirits of the departed’. It’s an address to those who have gone before which alerts them that another spirit is on its way, and is commended to their care. Even if the rest of the inscription is broken off, worn away, or downright horrible, the opening letters DM mean that we can be sure we’re dealing with a tombstone, and not some other type of inscription.

Tombstone of Restitutus, 2nd-3rd century AD, Ashmolean Museum ANChandler.3.79

If we’re really lucky, the stonecutter might have included a slightly longer abbreviation, like the DIIS (this time with double ‘i’) MANIB we see on this ash-urn currently on display in the Ashmolean’s Rome gallery:

Ash-urn of Cornelia Thalia, c. AD 50-100, Ashmolean Museum AN2007.63, Rome Gallery

A toast for a ghost

One of the ways that the Romans kept the di manes happy was by making offerings. A recently deceased relative and the rest of the di manes could be honoured by pouring libations or leaving food on or near the grave. One of the pieces that the Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions Project hopes to put on display in 2015 is a remarkable tombstone for a woman named Livia Casta. In the middle of the stone is a relief carving of a Roman cup, pierced with four holes. The stone was originally set horizontally so that Livia Casta’s relatives could pour wine, honey and water offerings into the cup, which would drain through onto her ashes where she could enjoy it. Honouring the ghosts of dead relatives and the wider band of di manes was really a question of keeping them involved, and making sure they had their share of pleasures like food and drink.

Mensa sepulchralis of Livia Casta, AD 50-100, Ashmolean Museum ANChandler3.45

Did the Romans believe in ghosts?

It’s always dangerous to make generalisations about what an entire culture believed. It’s tempting to use the evidence in literature and inscriptions to draw conclusions about what the Romans thought, but plenty of people read (and write) ghost stories without necessarily being convinced about the existence of ghosts, and plenty of people ask for things to be caved on tombstones because they’re traditional. Some Romans probably believed in ghosts, and some probably didn’t. But what’s very clear is that the Romans liked the idea of ghosts, and used them in various different ways: for managing luck, for keeping family memories alive and even, just like us, for telling scary stories.

A more detailed discussion of the Latin inscriptions shown here, with full bibliographic references, will appear in the new catalogue of the Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions, which will be freely available online before 2016.

The Rome Gallery, Ashmolean Museum

On a shelf in the Ashmolean’s Rome Gallery, eagle-eyed visitors might spot a tiny bronze plaque, with a rectangular body and triangular handles (a shape called a tabula ansata). At only 5cm tall, a dark greeny-brown and covered with dots, the plaque isn’t much to look at. But on close inspection (squinting helps), these dots form the letters of a Latin inscription. See how many you can make out before scrolling down:

Dot-to-dot decoding

The dots were made by hitting a round-tipped punch with a hammer, and have left the back of the plaque covered in tiny bumps. The punched letters are a bit wonky, don’t quite fit onto the plaque (the middle line spreads out onto the handles), and, worst of all, someone wrote ‘HERCULL’ instead of ‘HERCULI’ (even the Romans made spelling mistakes). But there has also been some care taken to centre the text, to make sure that words are not split up over line-breaks, and even to include little serifs which imitate fancier stone-carved letters. A serif (from the Dutch ‘screef’) is the small mark that can be added to the end of letter-stroke, giving a neat finish to the lines and, on stone, making it easier for the stonemason to compare the height of each letter. On our little tablet, smaller dots have been added, making little stems on the letters to make them look smarter. You can see these very clearly on the first letter of each line.

By Hercules!

As in the majority of Latin inscriptions, some of the words have been abbreviated to save space, effort and material. On our tablet, the abbreviations have saved 11 letters, and lots of punched dots. In full, it says:

Deo / Herculi/ Marus tribunus / legionis XX fecit

‘For the god Hercules, Marus, tribune of the 20th legion, made this.’

It’s a short inscription which tells us that the plaque was nailed up as an offering to Hercules by a Roman army officer stationed in Britain. Offerings like these were a way of asking or thanking the gods for support. It’s no surprise that Hercules, famous for his strength and courage, was the god of choice for Marus, the military man.

Since he tells us that he was a tribune, Marus was probably of equestrian rank, but the relatively modest scale of the bronze plaque suggests that he was one of the mid-ranking officers. Although the 20^th legion spent much of its time stationed at Chester (Roman Deva), in north-west of England, near the border with Wales, the plaque was supposedly discovered on the opposite side of the county, at Benwell, near Newcastle and the Roman fort at Condercum. It’s possible that Marus set up this offering to Hercules while the legion was on active service near Hadrian’s Wall.

XX, VV, ??

In either AD 61 or AD 8, the 20^th legion (or ‘LEG XX’ as Marus puts it) was rewarded for its bravery with the special honorific title Valeria Victrix. To keep things short, the 20^th Legion Valeria Victrix often appeared in inscriptions as ‘LEG XX VV’. This was precisely the abbreviation we found in April 2014 when the AshLI team used special imaging software to read a disappearing inscription on an altar in the Ashmolean’s Ark to Ashmolean Gallery (here).

If Marus didn’t bother to include ‘VV’ on the plaque, it might mean that it was made before the legion was awarded the title, and could give us some clue to its date. But the letters might also just have been left out to save space. After all, Marus didn’t even have enough room to include his full name. The famous clay antefix on display in the British Museum,was made long after the legion got its new name, but still only has the basic ‘LEG XX’. Because our bronze plaque made its way onto the antiquities market without a proper archaeological record of where it was found, we may never really know exactly when it was that a Roman soldier went to Newcastle and punched Hercules…

c. 1^st-2^nd centuries AD (?). Ashmolean Museum AN2001.1. H. 0.49, W. 0.71, D. 0.1. On display in the Rome Gallery of the Ashmolean Museum.

A more detailed discussion of the plaque, with full bibliographic references, will appear in the new catalogue of the Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions, which will be freely available online before 2016.

Duty Free Delos

The tiny island of Delos sits midway between the Greek mainland and Asia Minor.

In the second century BC, the little Greek island of Delos in the Cyclades experienced an unexpected boom, as it became the place to do business in the eastern Mediterranean. Rome was not yet an empire, but Latin-speaking tradesmen were already very familiar the region. Everyone knew something about these enterprising people from Italy.

In 166 BC, the Romans made Delos a tax free port, making it an attractive place to trade goods and slaves. Many traders set up homes on the little island, making it a cosmopolitan commercial centre where Greek speakers and Latin speakers lived and worked side by side.

A Bilingual Inscription

(L) The Randolph Gallery at the Ashmolean Museum; (R) A colossal head of Apollo mounted on Avilius’ altar.

Today, the long Randolph Gallery of the Ashmolean Museum is lined with statues and reliefs from the Arundel Collection, and with a series of Greek altars which now serve as statue bases. These altars all follow a similar formula: a marble drum, shaped like a cotton reel, encircled with swags of foliage and bulls’ heads (bucrania, which refer to animal sacrifice). But one of these altars, now supporting a colossal head of Apollo, is an important record of relations between the Greek- and Latin-speaking inhabitants of Delos.

The altar dates to the late second century or early first century BC, when it was set up as a funeral marker for a man named Quintus Avilius. It is inscribed, in uneven letters, in both languages on the smooth surface of the drum: the Latin inscription at the top, the Greek at the bottom. But while what they say is largely similar, there are some revealing differences.

 When a Roman is not a Roman

Q(uinte) Avili C(aii) f(ilie) Lanu(v)ine salve
‘Quintus Avilius, son of Gaius, of Lanuvium, farewell.’

 The Latin inscription tells us that Quintus Avilius originally came from Lanuvium, a town in Latium, just over 30 km to the south-east of Rome. Someone from Lanuvium at this date (before the Social War) would not actually have been a Roman citizen. The Greek inscription, on the other hand, gives slightly different information:

  ΚοΐντεἈυίλλιεΓαΐουυἱὲΡωμαῖε
χρηστὲχαῖρε

‘Quintus Avillius, son of Gaius, Roman, honest man, farewell.’

This inscription calls Avilius a Roman, even though he wasn’t. And our inscription is not the only Greek text from Delos to do this. It seems that traders from Italy who spoke Latin were routinely called Romaioi by the Greek speakers on the island, even though they weren’t from the city of Rome, or have Roman citizenship. As far as the Greek speakers were concerned, the distinction apparently didn’t matter. And, judging by Avilius’ altar, everyone, including the Latin-speakers, went along with it.

An honest Roman?

Another difference is the inclusion of the adjective χρηστὲ – ‘honest’ in the Greek inscription, which doesn’t appear in the Latin. We might wonder why it’s been added. Its meaning is complicated by the fact that inscriptions don’t include punctuation. If we take it with the preceding word, the phrase Ρωμαῖε χρηστὲ means ‘an honest Roman’, which isn’t very flattering to Romans! It might give us a clue as to how the Greek speakers of Delos felt about their Latin-speaking colleagues. But in fact, χρηστὲ belongs with the word which follows it. The final phrase χρηστὲ χαῖρε – ‘honest (man), farewell’, is really a common, stand-alone ending in funerary inscriptions from Delos, and the stonecutter put those two words on the line below to show they belonged to a new clause. In our English translation, at least, we can use commas.

If we want to find out about relations between the Greek and Latin speakers in Delos, perhaps most revealing of all is the fact that someone, perhaps even Avilius himself, made the decision to have his funerary monument inscribed in both languages. His friends, customers and clients could read about him in whichever language they preferred and see terms that they readily understood, even if those terms were not entirely accurate. It’s a thoughtful gesture, and perhaps no surprise from an island population that knew a thing or two about international marketing.