Latin Epitaphs Research Articles

Die bilingue Opfertafel der Tasuchion aus dem Fayum (Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum ÄM 11631)

Summary Publication of an early Roman offering table for the woman Tasouchion. The table probably came from the Fayum and was inscribed with a rare bilingual Hieroglyphic-Greek inscription. The Hieroglyphic text contains a ritual, while the Greek text offers a Greek version of the well-known and wide-spread Latin epitaph sit tibi terra levis. Both texts are analyzed in the context of ancient funerary practices.

The possibility of translating ancient Latin poetry: some French, English and Bulgarian versions of Ovidian poetry and of a Latin epitaph

The present text tries to compare different translations and interpretations of Latin poetic works. An everlasting discussion about the possibility to preserve the initial meaning and to transfer original codes into a new language medium, is illustrated within translations in three modern languages, from different linguistic groups – French, Bulgarian and English. Though the examples given in Latin are of different authorships, they all belong to the poetic genre and aim to illustrate how modern languages could translate and interpret classic verses and to what extent contemporary languages are able to stay loyal to the original. Classical Latin poems of Ovid and epigraphic epitaphs are chosen as being well known and challenging for many translators devoted to ancient texts. The poems of the roman poet Ovid have been studied by a lot of interpreters of classical antiquity and those chosen herein like Shilling, Sharankov, Bonniec and Frazer are some of the most representative. In Bulgarian medium a significant scientist in translation of old texts is Nicolay Sharankov whose interest in roman epigraphic inscriptions led him to some outstanding achievements, which are ana-lyzed in this research. The study also compares different traditions and outlooks of how Latin poetry should be transmitted into the so-called source language or langue cible. Many diach-ronic studies show strong and feeble parts of different approaches. An overview of transla-tions made in long periods of time makes possible to outline different paradigms for transmit-ting meaning and content. One less known material referred to is the work of Desjardins and his studies of Latin inscriptions found in Bulgaria.

2 Henry VI and the Tomb of Duke Humphrey

ABSTRACT This article explores the intersection of Shakespeare’s depiction of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester in 2 Henry VI and the cultural memory of this historical figure in the seventeenth century, with a focus on the site of the duke’s tomb at St Albans Abbey. I first call attention to, edit, and translate a Latin epitaph ‘pensild on the wall neare to his Tombe’ by the clergyman William Westerman around 1617, which could have been prompted by Shakespeare’s play. I then bring to light some explicit references to 2 Henry VI, previously unidentified, in the Civil War-era satirical pamphlet The Devill seen at St. Albons.

Little Lewis and Latin Folk in Chaucer's Prologue to the Treatise on the Astrolabe

Little Lewis and Latin Folk in Chaucer's Prologue to the <i>Treatise on the Astrolabe</i>

Onomastique et société à Calama

A good epigraphic collection in Calama from the first half of the 1st century A.D. to the beginning of the 5th century, testifies to a long history corroborated by an important urban heritage. The study of this epigraphic fund, composed mainly by pagan Latin epitaphs, allowed us to understand the different types of Calamense denominations, to understand their marital strategies and to establish the origins of cognomina and unique names

Łacińskie epitafia w farze poznańskiej

The paper deals with three Latin epitaphs that are located in the Parish Church in Poznań (the former Jesuit Church). These inscriptions honour Stanisław Grabski (ca. 1633–1693), Kasper Drużbicki (1590–1662) and Józef Pawłowski (1698–1759). The author provides a critical edition of the inscriptions, their Polish translations, as well as a commentary.

Joshua B. Freeman, Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World

Sir Christopher Wren was the architect of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, in which he is buried in a simple tomb with a famous Latin epitaph, which can be paraphrased for our purposes as “if you are searching for a monument, look about you.” Joshua Freeman, in his sparkling history of the factory, says much the same about his book's subject: if you want a monument to the factory, look about you, to your house, your study, your clothes, or your desk. What is there that hasn't been manufactured in a factory? And yet Freeman's book is also something of an epitaph to a business model. We live, we are often told, in a postindustrial age. The factory has lost its ability to awe or to amaze (though not, perhaps, the ability to produce indignation and anger). The factory as technology's avatar has been replaced by the high-tech campus, where things are not made manually but digitally, keystroke by keystroke. Still, we are very much products of the age of the factory.

Contested Boundaries: The Harvard Land Grants as an Archetype for Intercolonial Competition for Land

Research Article| October 01 2017 Contested Boundaries: The Harvard Land Grants as an Archetype for Intercolonial Competition for Land Robin Stephen McMahon Robin Stephen McMahon Robin Stephen McMahon is an adjunct instructor at New York University where he teaches history. He also teaches Latin at Bayside High School in Queens, NY. He grew up in New Haven, Connecticut and received his BA in history from Vassar College, MA in Classics from New York University, and MA in History from Columbia University. In addition to his interests in European history, he is interested in the early history of the New England colonies particularly colonial education. He recently collected, translated, and published the Latin epitaphs of the early students of Harvard and Yale. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Connecticut History Review (2017) 56 (2): 203–209. https://doi.org/10.5406/connhistrevi.56.2.0203 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Robin Stephen McMahon; Contested Boundaries: The Harvard Land Grants as an Archetype for Intercolonial Competition for Land. Connecticut History Review 1 January 2017; 56 (2): 203–209. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/connhistrevi.56.2.0203 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressConnecticut History Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Virtudes públicas en las inscripciones funerarias latinas: la expresión de la fortaleza y elocuencia femeninas

Los epitafios latinos dedicados a mujeres de toda condición encomian con frecuencia las virtudes de la puella y de la matrona ejemplar, eminentemente domésticas. Sin embargo, valores considerados masculinos como la fortaleza, la justicia y la elocuencia son ocasionalmente subrayados en inscripciones tanto métricas como en prosa, con una finalidad fundamentalmente consoladora que, sobre todo en las inscripciones cristianas, sirve además para completar un nuevo modelo de comportamiento.

"Uxor merens": La consideración de la mujer en la epigrafía funeraria de la Hispania Citerior

The present work studies a concrete aspect of the Latin epitaphs of Hispania Citerior: the epithets fiven to the wife. Their different semantic content and diversity in applications for social and economic status of women, reveals a different account of the wife ingenua, serva, liberta or peregrina .

Samuel Johnson. Edited by John H. Middendorf The Lives of the PoetsThe Lives of the Poets. Samuel Johnson. Edited by, John H. Middendorf. The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vols. 21–23. Edited by, Robert DeMaria Jr. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. Pp. xii+1583.

<i>Samuel Johnson</i>. Edited by <i>John H. Middendorf</i> The Lives of the Poets<i>The Lives of the Poets</i>. Samuel Johnson. Edited by, John H. Middendorf. The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vols. 21–23. Edited by, Robert DeMaria Jr. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. Pp. xii+1583.

A Pannonian auxiliary's epitaph from Roman Gordion

AbstractA funerary stele of a Pannonian auxiliary soldier recovered in 1996 at Gordion (Turkey) provided the first concrete evidence of Roman military activity at the site. The Latin epitaph on the monument revealed the presence of a unit (cohors VII Breucorum c.R. equitata), previously unattested in central Turkey, within the rural environs of northern Galatia. Little is currently known about the garrisons and movements of auxiliary forces in that region, and the monument's discovery permits a fresh examination of military deployment within Rome's comparatively lightly-garrisoned provinces of Asia Minor. New archaeological fieldwork in the Roman settlement at Gordion has provided a firm context for the stele, and recently published epigraphical finds relating to the soldier's unit and its deployment strongly link the monument's presence to activities surrounding Trajan's Parthian War (AD 114–117).

Addendum: The Religious Roles of Children in the Provinces

In my previous article, ‘The Roles of Children in Roman Religion’, it was shown, from literary and visual evidence, that children of both sexes played a part in religious cult in choirs and groups, as assistants to priests and other sacrificants, at weddings and in private rites. Most of the evidence cited came from Rome and Italy, as indeed the title implies. Since writing it, however, I have been collecting Latin epitaphs to children throughout the provinces of the Roman empire, and in the course of this study I have come across a small amount of evidence for children in religious roles. It is worth considering whether such children, along with those represented visually, were participating in what might be called offi cial Roman religion or whether they were to some extent involved in their own local cults.

Private life of Romans on Roman Latin epitaphs

The presented paper deals with the private life of Romans, as described on Latin funerary inscriptions. It focuses on people of humble origin of the city of Rome, their names, occupations and individual life stories.

Vorstellung von Tod und Jenseits in der Frühchristlichen Grabinschriften der Oikumene

The project “Mors secundum epigrammata christiana antiqua” is based on the compilation of inscriptions of the third to the sixth century from the Oikumene. These inscriptions speak about death and afterlife and display similarities and differences of ideas about life after death in East and West. Important themes in both West and East are the community with God or Christ, which is already prominent in the early inscriptions from the West, and statements referring to the eternal life, which can generally be found from the fourth century onward. In the East, invocations of God are particularly numerous and show the affectionate interest and solicitude of the living for the post mortem fortune of their dead. However, resurrection and final judgement are not an important theme either in the East nor in the West; the hereafter is depicted very positively, in contrast to the negative or indifferent afterlife of paganism. The refrigerium, a famous theme in the Christian Latin epitaphs of the 3rd and 4th century,...

Preferred word orders in later Latin epitaph inscriptions

Preferred word orders in later Latin epitaph inscriptions

'Music, why do you weep?' A lament for Alexander Agricola (d.1506)

Alexander Agricola died in Spain in 1506 in the service of Philip the Fair, King of Castile. Somebody composed for him a short, four-voice lament, Musica, quid defles?, which has been preserved uniquely in a much later collection of motets, Georg Rhau's Symphoniae jucundae of 1538. This article explores the idea that the lament might have been composed by a Spanish composer such as Juan de Anchieta who had served alongside Agricola in the last year of his life. The musical structure and idiom suggest this possibility, and the text may also have been penned by a member of the Castilian court, whether the composer himself or a figure such as Diego Ramirez de Villaescusa, head chaplain to Juana ‘the Mad‘, who published a set of four dialogues on the death of Juana's brother Juan in 1497. This Latin epitaph in dialogue form would certainly not be out of place in the tradition established in the Spanish kingdoms for elegies and other funerary and commemorative pieces, in both Latin and the vernacular, written—and sung—for important figures in the late 15th century. A musical setting of such a piece in Latin by a Spanish composer would appear to have been more unusual at this period; possibly Anchieta, if indeed the piece was by him, was thus contributing a special homage to his colleague in the Burgundian chapel.

Epitafios latinos de gladiadores en el occidente romano

Gladiatorial shows have captivated scholars from Antiquity. However, studies about gladiatorial epigraphy are more recent. The aim of this paper is to explore the structure and information recorded in the Latin epitaphs of the gladiators.

The Families of Roman Soldiers (First and Second Centuries A.D.): Culture, Law, and Practice

During the first two centuries A.D., Roman soldiers were prohibited from contracting legal marriage; the masculine nature of Roman military discipline was the likely motivation for the ban. Nevertheless, many Roman soldiers formed de facto unions with women and fathered children. This marriage ban is directly attested to in papyri from Roman Egypt that show that soldiers' marriages were illegal and that their children born during service were illegitimate. Military diplomas granted to discharged soldiers show that veterans were given the right to marry. This article explores the nature of the soldiers'de facto unions in Roman law and the impact of the ban on the soldiers' illegitimate children. This article also discusses the soldiers' union in social practice, based on a survey of Latin epitaphs. Soldiers more frequently married in the second century; other features, such as relatively late marriage or celibacy, seem characteristic of the homosocial military subculture.

TheTristiaof a Greek refugee: Michael Marullus and the politics of Latin subjectivity after the fall of Constantinople (1453)

Almost everything we know of Michael Marullus – Greek exile, Neoplatonist, mercenary soldier – is mediated by his poetry, much of which seems positively to invite biographical decoding. The poet tells us he was conceived in the year Constantinople fell to the Turks (1453), after which his family fled, via Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik), to Italy. Here he grew up under theIliadae … tecta Remi(Siena?), received an excellent education, and from an early age was frequenting the humanist academy of Giovanni Pontano at Naples. Marullus reports that when just seventeen, fate tore him away from his studies and plunged him into a military career (Epig.2.32.71–3). Between wars, both abroad and within Italy, he composed Latin poetry – including four books of controversial ‘pagan’ hymns –, edited Lucretius, and fraternised with such prominent figures in the literary and intellectual culture of the day as Jacopo Sannazaro and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Severed from an eventful life by a fittingly dramatic death, Marullus drowned in an attempt to cross the river Cecina in full flood. His poetic talents were much appreciated in his own time, for example by Leonardo Da Vinci and Thomas More. The love lyrics to ‘Neaera’, though perhaps stiff and conventional to modern taste, inspired Ronsard. His untimely death drew Latin epitaphs from all over Italy.