A Group of Inscriptions from Stabiae

Abstract

The group of inscriptions described below was found on the former estate of the Marchesi Pellicano, near the road from Stabiae to Nocera. These stones have hitherto remained in their garden along with others published by F. di Capua, but passed in 1969 into the keeping of the Antiquarium Statale di Castellamare di Stabia. Our main concern has been with the unpublished items, nos. 1–3 and 6–8, but we have added notes on four related texts, nos. 4, 5 and 9, 10 which have not been adequately described and discussed in earlier accounts.Nos. 1–3 are examples of a type of funerary stele characteristic of Pompeii and neighbouring towns for a short period after Luna marble became easily available. The fullest discussion of them is by M. W. Frederiksen who argues that they derived from a kind of small herm made of local stone and characteristic of the same area at an earlier period; with the introduction of marble the earlier type was transformed into the ‘silhouette-herm’—a thin slab of marble terminating in a disc-shaped projection above a narrow neck which preserves in outline only the form of its predecessors, although occasionally features such as hair are briefly indicated (as here on no. 3); the new type, too, vanishes during the Julio-Claudian period when local traditions of the sort were being swamped by more cosmopolitan influences, of which the use of marble is itself one facet. Examples of the type have already been found at Nuceria and indeed at Stabiae itself so that the new items fit satisfactorily into a context. Frederiksen's material showed that its users were usually of the humbler classes and with this conclusion too the new examples accord.