Compulsions to Commemorate: Slave Children in the Funerary Landscape of Ancient Rome. Daisy Bonsall, McGill

Compulsions to Commemorate: Slave Children in the Funerary Landscape of Ancient Rome

Daisy Bonsall, McGill

It is difficult to find evidence of the presence of slave children in ancient Rome. One of

the places they do appear, albeit sparsely, is in the funerary context. Commemoration of slave

children in funerary monuments offers insight into the roles they played in the context of the

family group, both the slave family and in the wider context of a master’s familia , particularly for

slaves in the domestic sphere who would have had closer contact with the master’s familia .

Evidence from funerary monuments of slave children from Roman Italy between the first and

third century CE sheds light on the experience of slave children in family relationships and the

ways those relationships might have affected the children’ s commemoration. The variation in the

relationships depicted in slave children’ s funerary monuments demonstrates the social fluidity of

the slave child, someone who could form different kinds of familial bonds with both an

immediate slave family and the wider kin group of the master’s familia . Within these different

relationship contexts, people used the commemoration of slave children to engage in acts of

self-representation.

To begin to understand what these relationships might have looked like, it is necessary to

examine who could or did commemorate slave children in funerary monuments and why they

might have done so within the broader context of death and Roman funerary practices. Another

key contextualisation is the study of children and the family, which, like the understanding of

Roman society’s ideas of death and the rituals surrounding funerary commemoration, offers an

important framework for the analysis of slave children’ s funerary monuments.

The funerary monuments of slave children are part of the material culture of death in

ancient Rome. Understanding how Romans interacted with the experience of death helps put the

funerary monuments into context, in turn allowing for a more substantiated and useful analysis.

Valerie Hope’s Roman Death: The Dying and the Dead in Ancient Rome offers an overview of the

concept of death in ancient Rome. Hope stresses the fact that Romans of all social levels placed

importance on remembering the dead in a process of mourning that “collectively and

individually, was a duty.” 1 She argues that this duty was a lasting one that affected the living long

after the initial mourning and funeral ended. It was the responsibility of the living to remember

the dead, a task Hope argues was aided by “literature, inscriptions, buildings, statues and tombs”

that served as constant reminders of those who had died. 2 This responsibility on the part of the

living is important to the discussion of slave children’ s funerary monuments and their meaning

because it provides the context in which these monuments were created. The idea that slave

children’ s funerary monuments were commissioned within an environment where part of the

purpose they served was to be a constant reminder of the child’s life suggests a conscious desire

to remember these children in perpetuum. Their commemoration could imply a level of

sentimentality or a desire to commemorate a specific relationship dynamic on the part of the

monument’s dedicator — both important realities to consider when trying to understand the

types of relationships slave children had with the people who commemorated them.

The way Romans treated the death of children sheds light on the particularities of

commemorations of slave children, as opposed to the general realities of commemorations of

slaves of all ages. Maureen Carroll examines the commemoration of free newborns and children

under the age of one in Roman Italy. She challenges Roman attitudes towards infant death

1 Valerie M Hope, Roman Death: Publishing Group, 2009), 185. 2 Hope, Roman Death, 185. The Dying and the Dead in Ancient Rome (London: Continuum International

presented in literary sources such as the writings of Cicero and Plutarch, which imply that

Romans cared little for children who died so young. Carroll argues that despite a lack of evidence

for public ceremonies commemorating the deaths of babies, Roman families could still have

mourned in private, indicating an attachment to the young children. 3

To this notion of private mourning, Carroll adds the idea of private commemorations

such as the burial of infants in living areas rather than in cemeteries. She notes that this kind of

burial could indicate that “perhaps in some places children who died so young were kept close to

the community of the living as a sign of being special, or perhaps the parents simply chose this

more private way of burying their children rather than the public act of interring them in a

communal cemetery.” 4 Carroll’s insight into private commemoration contrasts with Hope’s idea

of the purpose of public funerary commemoration as an important reminder of the dead. This

contrast is indicative of the different forms that funerary commemoration could take in ancient

Rome and of the overarching importance of commemoration practices both in private and in

public. Carroll’s focus on young children is also important because it stresses the fact that the

culture of Roman funerary practice, as Hope discusses, was ideologically pervasive — in that

some kind of commemoration was always important — but that it could be adapted to suit the

needs of particular kinds of commemoration such as the private burials of young children.

Although Carroll’s article focuses on free children, it nevertheless indicates the existence of a

kind of family bond that could motivate child commemoration. Carroll’s arguments offer

valuable context for the examination of slave children’ s funerary commemorations by enriching

the understanding of possible relationships slave children were involved in that could have led to

their funerary commemoration.

3 Maureen Carroll, “‘No Part in Earthly Things. ’ The Death, Burial and Commemoration of Newborn Children and Infants in Roman Italy, ” in Families in the Roman and Late Antique World, eds. Mary Harlow and Lena Larsson Lovén, 41–63 (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2012), 41, 46–47. 4 Carroll, “‘No Part in Earthly Things, ’” 45.

The study of the Roman family is another important frame for understanding what those

relationships might have been. Richard Saller and Brent Shaw’s study of the topic draws on

trends in dedicator-dedicatee relationships from Roman funerary inscriptions, noting that “in

dedications from civilian populations across the western empire, relationships within the

immediate family greatly outnumber every other type.” 5 From this evidence, they conclude that

the nuclear family was the most important kin unit of Roman society and thus the most likely to

commemorate each other. Suzanne Dixon ’ s study of the slave family adds another dimension to

Saller and Shaw’s conclusion by shedding light on how slave children could have fit into family

networks in ancient Rome. Dixon acknowledges the importance of the nuclear family, as Saller

and Shaw emphasize, but stresses that Roman law prioritized the rights of the master over those

of the slave. As a result, slave families had no real protection of their relationships under the law

— though she notes that in practice, slaves certainly formed familial bonds. 6

Orlando Patterson’ s Slavery and Social Death , a comparative study about slavery in a global,

transtemporal context, also examines the possibility of family bonds among slaves. He posits that

slavery necessitates a natal alienation, a “loss of ties of birth in both ascending and descending

generations.” 7 Patterson also argues that all slaves underwent a social death wherein the slave

“had no social existence outside of his master.” 8 Neither of these arguments leave room for the

maintenance of family bonds between slaves, suggesting that slaves were forcibly excluded by

their status from the unit that Saller and Shaw deem the essential building block of Roman

society. It seems unlikely that such a complete removal from family connections would always be

possible, especially in the domestic context in Rome, where slaves lived in close proximity to

5 Richard P. Saller and Brent D. Shaw, “Tombstones and Roman Family Relations in the Principate: Civilians, Soldiers and Slaves, ” The Journal of Roman Studies 74 (1984), 145. 6 Suzanne Dixon, The Roman Family (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 54. 7 Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1982), 7. 8 Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 38.

each other and to their master’s familia , sometimes related to members of both groups. Dixon ’ s

theory seems more plausible: although slave families had no rights under Roman law, they still

formed unstable familial bonds outside that structure of protection.

Specifically dealing with the Roman context, Henrik Mouritsen’ s analysis of epitaphs of

freedpeople at Pompeii and Ostia also stresses the lack of familial bonds available to slaves by

emphasizing how that changed upon manumission. He posits that freedpeople took up the

practice of putting up funerary inscriptions as part of a common culture born from the shared

experience of manumission, which “was above all a personal transformation, whose main

tangible benefit for most freedmen would have been gaining control over their own bodies, and

with that also the right to form recognized and secure unions whose offspring were protected

under law, in other words having a family.” 9 For Mouritsen, this transformative experience

encouraged a common culture among freedmen as well as a sentimental motivation to

commemorate the family unit that had been previously unavailable to these people when they

were still enslaved. Mouritsen’ s and Dixon ’ s emphasis on the unprotected, potentially transient

nature of bonds within slave families prompts the question of how these uncertain slave family

networks affected slave children.

One possible answer to this question is that despite the lack of protection under the law,

slave families managed to form some kind of lasting bonds within a nuclear family unit, or at

least something similar to it. Susan Treggiari argues that in some cases, a master would have

supported a slave union, a contubernium — a union but not a recognized, legal marriage — “both

for the sake of morale in his household and for the sake of slave-breeding.” 10 Treggiari cites the

example of an enslaved man named Spendo, who set up a memorial to commemorate himself

9 Henrik Mouritsen, “Freedmen and Decurions: Epitaphs and Social History in Imperial Italy, ” Journal Roman Studies 95 (2005), 60. 10 Susan Treggiari, “Family Life among the Staff of the Volusii, ” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-2014) 105 (1975), 396. of

and his two wives — the relationships are described on the monument as contubernales — Panope,

who died aged 22, and Phoebe, who died aged 37 ( CIL VI 7297). This shows that it could have

been possible for a slave child to have grown up with a sense of a familial bond with their own

parents, despite such a bond’s lack of legal support, which Dixon stresses as a divider of

enslaved families. This possibility seems likely given the evidence of commemoration of slave

children by their parents such as in the case of the stela of Facundus ( CIL V 2625). 11

The stela of Facundus features a half-figure portrait of the boy, set in a niche, wearing a

toga and holding a ball in his hand. Around the portrait, the stela is decorated with carvings of

Corinthian-style columns and a band of regular, geometric architectural features with rosette

corners. Overall, the impression given by the stela does not, at first glance, suggest the

commemoration of a slave child. In particular, the toga, which, as Jason Mander notes,

symbolizes Roman citizenship, is slightly confusing. 12 However, the inscription makes the boy’s

status clear:

Facundus, slave of Domitius, of 10 years, Fuscus and Chia, parents (did this). 13

The inscription is fairly simple, noting both Facundus’s servile status and his connection to his

parents. These are the two vectors that define him, first as a slave, then as a son. The presence of

a parent-child connection challenges the idea that slaves did not have access to the structure of

the nuclear family. The presentation of Facundus is also interesting given that the toga he is

wearing “must be wholly artificial,” an aspirational detail that “may show an attempt to correct

the inequalities experienced in life and achieve a new status and comfort level in death.” 14 The

symbolism of the toga is curious because even though it seems to represent a hope that

11 Appendix: Figure 1 12 Jason Mander, Portraits Press, 2013), 51. 13 Appendix: Figure 1 14 Mander, Portraits, 52. of Children on Roman Funerary Monuments (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Facundus might be perceived as of a higher status than he actually was, the first vector of his

identity mentioned is his status as a slave, with the name of his master. This draws out a level of

tension between the desire of Facundus’s parents to present him to posterity in a certain light

and the reality of his day-to-day existence as a slave.

The motivation for the creation of this monument seems largely sentimental on the part

of Facundus’s parents. Fuscus and Chia’s desire to commemorate their son in this idealized form

is in line with Hope’s conception of the function of Roman funerary monuments as a marker of

a person’ s life and a public reminder to remember them, because Facundus’s parents are

presenting him to posterity in the most positive way they are able. Their commemoration of their

son challenges Patterson’ s theories of natal alienation and social death because it demonstrates a

clear desire to secure for posterity an image not only of their son but also of their family

connection through their sponsorship of the monuments as his parents. The stela marks a reality

of slave lives that differs from what the legal protections for families proscribed. As Dixon

posits, the realities of interpersonal and family relationships were not necessarily reflective of the

protection those bonds had under Roman law.

Monuments such as Facundus’s also complicate Mouritsen’ s model of the common class

shared by freedpeople as a source of sentimentality that drove the creation of funerary

monuments. It challenges the implication that only upon manumission, which brought the legal

protection of family ties, did those bonds become something people desired to commemorate.

The case of Facundus is perhaps indicative of a moment when a desire to commemorate a

familial bond between slaves was strengthened by the very nature of the bond’s potential

impermanence. In erecting a stela for their son that commemorated him in an idealized mode,

coded with a false implication of Roman citizenship conveyed by his dress in the toga,

Facundus’s parents were also creating a monument to the bonds of their family. Through their

son ’ s commemoration, they created a monument to their relationship with each other as well as

the child they shared. Acknowledging their family unit alongside Facundus’s status as a slave

speaks to the possibility of slaves creating family units within a system that could easily make

those bonds difficult to maintain, since masters were ultimately in control of their slaves’

autonomy. Through the funerary commemoration of their child, Fuscus and Chia were able to

represent themselves and their family bond in a permanent theatre that existed outside the

uncertainty of the lives of slaves.

The analysis of Facundus’s stela is complicated by the lack of knowledge available about

the status of his parents as the dedicators of his monument. It is possible that they were freed

and thus had more autonomy to commission the monument and to define their son ’ s image in an

idealized visual language. However, their identification each by a single nomina is usually indicative

of slave status. 15 In addition, the lack of any of the usual markers of freedperson status, including

an acknowledgement of that status, 16 also points to the parents being slaves. Regardless of the

parents’ status, the monument still demonstrates a maintenance of family ties that transgress the

total control of the slave system over the bodies of slaves, given that Facundus was definitely

enslaved when he died.

It is also important to note that the commemoration of slaves by other slaves was not

unheard of, and thus Fuscus and Chia’s monument for their child, while not necessarily the

norm, was not an impossibility within their social context. Such commemoration was more

accessible to slaves whose masters were part of the highest echelons of society, such as slaves of

the imperial house, and therefore had access to more resources that would allow them to finance

such monuments. For example, the epitaph of Alexander, a slave of two Augusti, which

15 Mander, Portraits, 71. 16 Mouritsen, “Freedmen and Decurions, ” 41.

Alexander himself had made to commemorate himself and his son, Marcus, demonstrates such

an ability ( CIL 6 08987). 17 The layout of the text on Alexander’s monument highlights his role as

an imperial slave; the first two lines of text, which are larger than the rest, contain his name, his

status as an imperial slave, and the fact that he himself had the monument made. This focus on

his position alongside the declaration that he was able to create the monument is perhaps

indicative of a level of pride in his position as a slave to the highest-status family in the empire, a

position that helped him erect the monument.. Such an example of an intra-slave funerary

commemoration is helpful for situating Facundus’s monument within an environment where,

even though slaves were legally the property of their masters, they were able to exert levels of

agency in certain contexts, especially if their masters were of high status.

However, the opposite reality, in which slave children did not maintain ties to their family,

and were thus not commemorated by them, is also demonstrated in funerary monuments to

slave children. These cases fall more easily into Dixon ’ s and Mouritsen’ s conceptions of family

separation brought about by slavery and could be read as a case for Patterson’ s natal alienation

argument and his conception of social death as a reorientation of the slave’s entire social

existence to be about their master. What is interesting about these cases of slave children’ s

commemorations is the identity of the dedicators, in these examples the masters, who essentially

fulfill the same function as Facundus’s parents. These commemorations are suggestive of

alternative types of bonds slave children might form within the wider context of their master’s

familia if they were denied the chance to maintain their connection to their nuclear family unit.

The funeral stela of the slave child Pudens is remarkably similar to Facundus’s. The

monument contains a bust of Pudens, who is dressed in what appears to be a toga, set in a niche.

The inscription and the bust are framed in a geometric border, and Pudens is flanked by detailed

17 Appendix: Figure 2.

carvings of trees and a bird. 18 However, unlike in the case of Facundus, the monument is

dedicated by Pudens’s master, Iulia Corintias:

To the departed spirits of Pudens, who lived for 6 years and 3 months. Iulia Corintias set this up to her sweetest household slave ( CIL VI 25203). 19

This type of slave commemoration suggests that the relationship between master and slave was

more complex than a simple exchange between an owner and their human property. The

complication of the master-slave dynamic introduces the idea that a level of sentimentality or

care might motivate such a commemoration. Iulia’s commemoration of Pudens could indicate

that their relationship was informed by something similar to a parent-child bond. Pudens is

described as a verna , a term generally used to denote a house-born slave and that Beryl Rawson

argues could result in these slaves “enjoying some of the better circumstances of foster-children

— some affection, some expectation of family inheritance, some responsibility for carrying on

the family name.” 20 Though Pudens does not carry Iulia’s name, the use of the word verna is

nevertheless charged with a certain type of pseudo-familial bond. As in the case of Facundus and

his parents, it seems that Pudens’s epitaph was created with sentimental motivation, to serve as a

reminder for Iulia of her slave child.

Hanne Nielsen discusses a similar type of bond in his examination of delicium as a term of

endearment used to describe children, usually slaves who were involved in “a relation [with their

masters] that seems frequently to have had almost a parent/child-like character.” 21 Nielsen

examines the epitaphs of the Corpus Inscriptonium Latinarum Volumen VI and notes that there are

125 delicia commemorated of which “the majority were probably slaves.” 22 He also analyzes a

18 Appendix: Figure 3. 19 Appendix: Figure 3. 20 Beryl Rawson, “Children in the Roman Familia, ” in The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives, ed. Beryl Rawson (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1986), 196. 21 Hanne Sigismund Nielsen, “Delicia in Roman Literature and in the Urban Inscriptions, ” Analecta Romana Instituti Danici 19 (1990), 79. 22 Nielsen, “Delicia, ” 83.

poem by Statius, written in commemoration of his own dead delicium , to argue that these children

could sometimes fill the role of a surrogate child. 23 Statius’s delicium had been manumitted before

death because of this relationship. Though Pudens evidently died a slave, the type of sentimental

bond that Nielsen argues helped motivate Statius to free, and then commemorate in a poem, his

delicium , might be similar to the bond Iulia and Pudens shared. It is impossible to know if Iulia

intended to ever free Pudens but comparing Iulia and Pudens to Statius and his delicium suggests

the possibility of a pseudo-familial bond between master and child. Thus, a level of

sentimentality is a plausible motivation in Iulia’s commemoration of her slave.

However, despite this possibility of a sentimental motivation to commemorate, the

dynamic of ownership must also be considered when analyzing Pudens’s epitaph. The inscription

emphasizes Iulia’s status as the slave master by using her relationship with Pudens as the only

identifiable vector of the slave’s identity. Thus, the monument serves to reflect Iulia’s status as a

slave-owning woman, making its erection an expression of her own agency. All the descriptors of

Pudens — vernae , dulcissimae , and even the name Pudens, which means shame or modesty —

define the slave in relation to Iulia and highlight the power she has to dictate the child’s identity.

Her control is solidified by Pudens’s epitaph, which establishes this identity even after the slave’s

death on the stage of the public process of Roman funerary commemoration. Just as Facundus’s

stela served as a way for his parents to display their family ties, so does Pudens’s stela reflect a

purpose beyond simply commemorating the child.

The cippus of Nerantus is another example of a slave child commemorated in relation to

their master. Though the inscription does not explicitly state that Nerantus’s master arranged the

commemoration, he is the only other person mentioned on the monument, which suggests his

involvement in the process:

23 Nielsen, “Delicia, ” 81.

Nerantus, slave of M. Arrius, of 3 years ( EDCS 10700199). 24

Like Facundus and Pudens, Nerantus is dressed in a toga, a presentation of the slave child

visually coded to look like a citizen. Nerantus’s cippus is ornate, featuring a bust of the boy, set in

a niche, framed by two columns. The top of the monument features a decorative palmette. At the

foot of the inscription a dog is carved in relief, and Nerantus holds a bird in his hand. As with

the stelae of Facundus and Pudens, the detail on the cippus of Nerantus reflects a high level of

care and planning that went into the creation of the monument. As with Pudens’s stela,

Nerantus’s cippus presents the slave boy’s identity only in relation to his master. In these cases, it

is possible that the presence of the toga is intended to further solidify the connection between

the citizen master and the slave child as a symbol of the master’s own status. This possibility

offers an explanation for the toga that differs from Mander’s hypothesis about Facundus’s toga

as an aspirational detail. However, this contrast makes sense given the different ways the

monuments were used by either the parents or the masters of the slave children to both

commemorate their relationships and engage in self-presentation . The cippus, with its detail and

quality, reflects Arrius’s ability to finance such an intricate commemoration, thus bolstering his

own status through the commemoration of Nerantus.

In the cases of Pudens and Nerantus, the masters’ presentations of their slave children on

detailed funerary monuments provided them a chance to engage in a world of public

commemoration that Roman elites were increasingly separate from, especially after the transition

from Republic to Empire. As Mouritsen notes: “when looking at élite burials, one is struck by

the relative rarity of self-commemoration.” 25 He argues that most elite burials reflected a more

restrained, private practice of funerary commemoration. This argument suggests another reason

24 Appendix: Figure 4. 25 Mouritsen, “Freedmen and Decurions, ” 46.

slave children’ s funerary commemorations could be a useful tool for their masters.

Commemorating slave children allowed Roman elites to engage in the public practice of funerary

commemoration that Hope outlines in Roman Death . Importantly though, the members of the

elite did not have to directly involve themselves or members of their immediate family units in a

mode of funerary commemoration that was increasingly becoming a stage for freedmen. 26 The

commemoration of a slave child who was close to the master’s familia provided Roman elites with

a pseudo-familial connection they could use to engage with a specific funerary dialogue and to

open a new avenue of self-presentation. Stelae such as those of Pudens and Nerantus highlight

this possibility in their identification of the slave children completely by their relationships to

their masters.

The similarities between Pudens’s, Nerantus’s and Facundus’s funerary monuments

indicate a specific language used in this type of commemoration. The simplicity of the

inscriptions, which always include the child’s age, the depiction of the children in togas set in

niches, and the decorative — and therefore costly — nature of the monuments reflect a level of

consistency in the practice. This consistency suggests that the commemorators of these young

slaves were making use of a certain type of commemorative language that provided a frame for

both the inscription and the visual character of the monument used in the process of

commemoration. The detail and quality of the monuments, as well as the distinctive addition of

the toga to each slave, suggests a consistency not only in the practice of these commemorations

but also in their intended meanings. It is unreasonable to argue that these monuments exist

completely devoid of sentimental motivation; the plausibility of this view is grounded in Carroll’s

argument about the desire to commemorate infants despite their perceived lack of importance

and Nielsen’ s examination of masters’ relationships with their delicia . However, it is equally

26 Mouritsen, “Freedmen and Decurions, ” 52.

unreasonable to interpret these monuments as solely motivated by that sentimentality when they

are all employing a language of commemoration that allows the dedicators to engage in acts of

self-representation — Facundus’s parents recognizing their status as a family, and the masters of

Nerantus and Pudens recognizing their status as wealthy slave-owners. In each case, the detail

and quality of the monuments also reflects the agency and affluence of the dedicators, factors

that would have been necessary to create such commemorations.

The types of family bonds that slave children were involved in during their lives shaped

the way their identities were commemorated in death. The varied nature of the roles they played

as members of familial and pseudo-familial bonds is revealed through the variation in the status

of the dedicators of the children’ s funerary monuments. Thus, examining the epitaphs of slave

children in Roman Italy reveals just as much, if not more, about the dedicators of the epitaphs,

especially when the dedicators were the children’ s masters, as it does about the slave children

themselves. Particularly revealing are the similarities in the visual program of epitaphs erected by

slave parents and those erected by the masters of slave children. In both cases, there appears to

be an emphasis on presenting an idealized, very Roman version of the child that suggests a link

to citizenship, as demonstrated by their appearing in togas. In both the cases of the masters as

commemorators and that of the parents as commemorators, the creation of the idealized image

of the dead slave child became an avenue for self-expression on the part of the dedicators.

Although it seems unlikely that such commemorations were completely void of sentimental

motivation, it should not be discounted that these commemorations also served practical

purposes for the dedicators. The children were, at the same time, people to be commemorated

and tools through which the dedicators of their commemorations could represent their own

identities. In the case of Facundus, his epitaph provided his parents with a place to create solid

evidence of their family bond. This bond was emphasized not only by naming themselves on the

monument, but also through the actual process of having their son, the physical embodiment of

their coupling, commemorated on the Roman funerary stage. For the masters of Pudens and

Nerantus, commemoration of their slaves provided them access to a theatre of self-presentation

that they, as elites, were not directly involved in. The implications of these funerary epitaphs put

into stark relief the simple yet encompassing ways identities of slave children could be shaped by

those who held power over them, even in death.

Appendix

Figure 1. “Stela of Facundus.” In Jason Mander, Portraits of Children on Roman Funerary Monuments . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, Catalogue #225, ( CIL V 2625). - Dates from first century CE - Findspot: Verona - Size: 81 cm x 40 cm x 18 cm

Inscription: - FACUNDO / DOMITI AN X / FUSCUS ET / CHIA PARE Translation: - Facundus, slave of Domitius, of 10 years, Fuscus and Chia, parents (did this)

Image:

Figure 2. “Epitaph to a Young Page of the Emperors.” In C Noviello. “VIII, 30. Un paggio imperial,” In Terme di Diocleziano : la collezione epigrafica , edited by R. Friggeri, M.G. Granino Cecere, G.L. Gregori, 516–517. Florence: Electa, 2012, ( CIL 6 08987). - Findspot: Cemetery of Sant’Ermete on the via Salaria Vetus, Rome - Size: 32.5 cm x 30 cm x 3 cm Inscription: - ALEXANDER AUGG SER(VUS) FECIT SE BIVO MARCO FILIO DULCISSIMO CAPUT-AFRICENSI QUI DEPUTA-BATUR INTER BESTITO-RES QUI VIXIT ANNIS MENSIBU(S) VIIII DIEBU(S) V PETO A BOBIS FRATRES BONI PER UNUM DEUM NE QUIS (H)UN(C) TITELO MOLESTET POS(T) MORT[EM MEAM] Translation :

Alexander, slave of the two Augusti, made for himself an and also for Marcus, the most sweet son, graduate of the school of pages, who was esteemed among the vestitores , who lived 18 years, nine months and five days. I ask of you all, good brothers, through the one god, not to let anyone disturb this tomb after my death Image:

Figure 3. “Slave Child’s Funerary Epitaph” From the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, ( CIL VI 25203). - Thought to date from second or third century CE - Findspot: likely Rome - Size: 56 cm x 37.5 cm x 6.8 cm

Inscription: - D(IS) M(ANIBUS) / PUDENTIS · VIX(IT) · AN(NIS) · VI / MENSIBUS · III /

IULIA · CORINTIAS / VERNAE · DULCISSIM(AE) / FECIT Translation: - To the departed spirits of Pudens, who lived for 6 years and 3 months. Iulia Corintias set this up to her sweetest household slave.

Image:

Figure 4. “Cippus of Nerantus.” In Jason Mander. Portraits of Children on Roman Funerary Monuments . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, Catalogue #220, ( EDCS 10700199). - Dates from first century CE - Findspot: Este - Size: 92 cm x 46 cm x 26 cm

Inscription: - NERANT[U]S / M ARRI / ANN III Translation: - Nerantus, slave of M. Arrius, of 3 years

Image:

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