Kruschwitz, Peter

Central Archive at the University of Reading

'I shall touch it with care and respect': à propos an hitherto neglected senarius from Roman Britain (EE VII 928 = RIB 659) Article Published Version Kruschwitz, P. (2017) 'I shall touch it with care and respect': à propos an hitherto neglected senarius from Roman Britain (EE VII 928 = RIB 659). Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 204. pp. 24­26. ISSN 0084­5388 Available at http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/70238/ It is advisable to refer to the publisher’s version if you intend to cite from the work.  See Guidance on citing .Publisher: University of Koeln All outputs in CentAUR are protected by Intellectual Property Rights law, including copyright law. Copyright and IPR is retained by the creators or other copyright holders. Terms and conditions for use of this material are defined in the End User Agreement . www.reading.ac.uk/centaur CentAUR Central Archive at the University of Reading Reading’s research outputs onlinePETER KRUSCHWITZ‘I SHALL TOUCH IT WITH CARE AND RESPECT’: À PROPOS A HITHERTO NEGLECTED SENARIUS FROM ROMAN BRITAIN (EE VII 928 = RIB 659)aus: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 204 (2017) 24–26© Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH, Bonn24‘I SHALL TOUCH IT WITH CARE AND RESPECT’: À PROPOS A HITHERTO NEGLECTED SENARIUS FROM ROMAN BRITAIN (EE VII 928 = RIB 659)Manfred G. Schmidtsexagenario quintoDiscovered in York in 1884 and with a date earlier than A. D. 120,1 EE VII 928 = RIB 659, a sizeable, but severely damaged and heavily fragmented altar (orig. 81.3 × 33 cm) with a dedication for Silvanus,2 carries two blocks of texts, clearly set apart from another by visual means.3 The fi rst, longer block of writing has been executed in large, carefully cut letters. It reads as follows (with its most plausible restorations and integrations):  D[eo sancto]   Silua[no s(acrum)].  L(ucius) Celerini(?)us4   Vitalis corni(cularius)5  5 leg(ionis) VIIII His(panae)   u(otum) s(oluit) l(aetus) l(ibens) m(erito).Immediately beneath this, a second segment of text exists, traced in substantially smaller letters:6  et donum hoc, donum  adpertiniat: cautum attiggam.1 The date is based on the arrival of the sixth legion, to replace the ninth, at York in A. D. 120.2 On the cult of Silvanus in Roman Britain see e. g. P. F. Dorcey, The Cult of Silvanus: A Study in Roman Folk Religion, Leiden–New York–Cologne 1992, esp. 54–56 (this inscription listed on p. 164).3 It is now on display in the Yorkshire Museum (inv. no. YORYM 2007.6164); for the museum record (with a photograph of the altar’s fragments) see https://www.yorkmuseumstrust.org.uk/collections/search/item/?id=8641 (accessed May 2017). I studied this altar in autopsy in May 2017.4 The nomen gentile has commonly been given as Celerinius or Celerin[i]us, including in RIB ad loc. Autopsy shows no traces of an I between N and V.  As Celerinus does not appear to be attested as a nomen gentile, there are four possible solutions to this conundrum: (i) the name is given without a gentile, but with two cognomina (more than unlikely); (ii) Celerinus is a hitherto unattested, yet valid gentile (perhaps possible, but rather unlikely); (iii) the I was originally superimposed and attached to the N or the V in the part of the inscription that is lost due to damage (possible, but in variation to how the inscription has been laid out otherwise); (iv) the stonecutter made a mistake (possible). The matter cannot be decided with certainty. 5 Thus the commonly preferred interpretation; an alternative is corni(cen). If Celerini(?)us Vitalis was indeed a cornicu-larius, then one would have to imagine that he served the legionary legate as a secretary; cf. K. Stauner, Das offi zielle Schrift-wesen des römischen Heeres von Augustus bis Gallienus (27 v. Chr. – 268 n. Chr.). Eine Untersuchung zu Struktur, Funktion und Bedeutung der offi ziellen militärischen Verwaltungsdokumentation und zu deren Schreibern, Bonn 2004 (with pp. 163 and 239 no. 18 specifi cally on this piece).6 The writing is semi-cursive, with II to represent the letter E in adpertiniat and a clearly cursive shape of the letters G in attiggam as well as of the letter A throughout. – In EE VII 928 it was suggested to read do: num(ini) rather than donum at the end of the fi rst line. The text layout (with slight, but clear spacing after hoc and adpertiniat, to mark syntactical transitions) suggests otherwise. ‘I Shall Touch It with Care and Respect’ 25Although the piece has been known for some 130 years now, it has (with one possible exception)7 been overlooked that this second text (written in a slightly different script,8 and never fully executed),9 consti-tutes an iambic senarius:  et don(um), hoc don(um), adpertiniat: caut(um) attiggam.   –  –  –  – | –  –  ⏑⏑  – | –  –  ⏑  – ||.While this senarius is elegant neither from a metrical nor from a syntactical point of view, this constitutes an important addition to the miniscule corpus of poetic texts that survive from Roman Britain.There are a number of additional observations to be made in support of a metrical interpretation of this segment (in addition to its scansion).10 First of all, one must acknowledge that the text of the senarius has been inscribed, with care, in between lines that guided the stonecutter’s writing, just like the main part of 7 The only person who (so far) appears to have considered this option was Otto Hirschfeld (‘fortasse qui scripsit versum senarium ut effi ceret temptavit’; EE ad loc.), who, however, worked forward from a badly corrupted version of the inscribed text. The item is absent from Bücheler–Lommatzsch, Carmina Latina Epigraphica as well as all subsequent additions to it, including the specialist editions of the Carmina Latina Epigraphica of Roman Britain collected by P. Cugusi, Carmi epigra-phici latini della Britannia, Rend. Mor. Acc. Lincei IX 2, 2006, 199–232 (now essentially replaced by P. Cugusi, Carmi latini epigrafi ci della Britannia (CLEBrit2), Epigraphica 76, 2014, 335–407), V. Asciutti, Poetic Britannia. A Census of Latin Verse Inscriptions, London 2010 (unpublished), M. Schumacher, Die Carmina Latina Epigraphica des römischen Britannien, Berlin 2012 [http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/diss/receive/FUDISS_thesis_000000040118], P. Kruschwitz, Undying Voices. The Poetry of Roman Britain, Reading 2015 [URL: http://thepetrifi edmuse.blog/undying-voices].8 It has been argued that this second part was added by a different hand and that it thus constitutes a subsequent addition; cf. e. g. EE ad loc. (‘videtur refecisse manus recentior’). This may be the case; if the present text exists only in its original draft stage, however, then it is entirely possible that it dates to the exact same time and was written by the same person, only superfi -cially incised to determine and capture the fi nal arrangement of the text across the object. The reason as to why the cutting of the letters has remained unfi nished is unclear and not evident from the text itself. 9 Only the fi rst three letters (with a start being made on the fourth) have been cut into the surface properly (if with a rather lesser degree of care than those of the main dedication).10 I take the -TI(G)- of attiggam to represent a short syllable, as it ought to be in its common spelling attigam, regardless of the orthography of the inscription, just as there are other orthographical peculiarities, but no apparent prosodical violations in this piece. The claim that ‘gg pro ng’ (thus ThLL s. v. attingo, 1143.72), which would be a Grecism (cf. V. Väänänen, Le latin vulgaire des inscriptions pompéiennes, Berlin 31966, 67), remains without text-internal support and can therefore safely be put aside. – Specifi cally on adpertiniat (written instead of adpertineat, to reduce the impact of internal hiatus) see recently J. N. Adams, Social Variation and the Latin Language, Cambridge 2013, 103; cf. also M. E. Raybould, A Study of Inscribed 26 P. Kruschwitzthe inscription. This makes it clear that this piece, despite its apparently unfi nished execution, was not just a random, unplanned, almost graffi to-like addition, but a (reasonably) carefully planned11 part of the overall design at some point in the monument’s history.12Secondly, a sudden reduction in letter size, drawing the reader closer into the text, is a common device to mark the transition from prose to verse.13 Thirdly, the text here changes perspective, as it moves from an impersonal third person singular (uotum soluit) of the main dedication to a rather more personal fi rst-per-son expression (cautum attiggam: ‘I shall touch it with care and respect’) in the senarius, a transition that follows an expression of pertinence (adpertiniat: ‘and this gift, let the gift pertain’) placed at the beginning of the very same line that ends with the fi rst-person verb attiggam.Theodor Mommsen, who comments on this item in EE ad loc., suggested that the fi nal expression ought to be imagined as being placed in the mouth of a passer-by who is to be instructed to avoid causing any damage to this monument (‘fortasse verba sunt suppeditata praetereunti signifi cantia se aediculam laesurum non esse’).14 More realistically, however, this phrase is crucial evidence for non-silent reading of monumental texts, obligating its readership (and quite possibly in this case the dedicant fi rst and foremost), through an act of reading out a binding declaration, to a respectful, religious treatment of a sacred monu-ment.15 What is even more interesting in that regard, however, is the (otherwise rarely attested) practice of making actual physical contact with an inscribed object as part of a broader ritual (and in reading a text that quite literally draws its interlocutor near through text layout and design).16Peter Kruschwitz, University of Reading, Department of Classics, Whiteknights, PO Box 218, Reading RG6 6AA, United Kingdomp.kruschwitz@reading.ac.ukMaterial from Roman Britain: An Inquiry Into Some Aspects of Literacy in Romano-British Society, Oxford 1999, 4. The verb appertineo, denoting ownership, is exceptionally rare; cf. ThLL s. v. appertineo, 279.53–59, listing a mere fi ve instances.11 One may mention the use of paragraph-initial et in this context as well, which is a common feature in non-standard lan-guage variety texts to introduce a new thought; more recently on this matter see for example H. Halla-aho, Linguistic Varieties and Language Level in Latin Non-Literary Letters, in: T. V. Evans – D. D. Obbink (eds.), The Language of the Papyri, Oxford 2010, 176–177.12 Photo: P. K. (May 2017); ©York Museums Trust (Yorkshire Museum).13 This ties in with another observation on the text’s structure that requires further comment, below. – Markers of transi-tion between prose and verse in mixed inscriptions have been studied extensively by M. Limón Belén, La compaginación de las inscripciones latinas en verso. Roma e Hispania, Rome 2014.14 Similarly the editors of RIB I ad loc. (‘I must beware of touching’), repeated e. g. in S. Ireland, Roman Britain. A Sourcebook, London 32008, 190. It seems as though the neuter of the past participle cautus -a -um has been used as an adverb here; cf. ThLL s. v. caveo, 643.51–52; the editor of the ThLL entry quite rightly, however, sees a parallel to Cic. Brut. 44: et ego cautius posthac historiam attingam te audiente, ‘and I shall treat the subject of history with greater respect and care in your presence from now on’. It would thus appear that the present request is thus a rather different one from the types of admonish-ments against damaging or defacing monuments (as recently covered in P. Kruschwitz, Attitudes towards Wall Inscriptions in the Roman Empire, ZPE 174 (2010) 207–218; further on this see now also R. Hernández Pérez, Versos epigráfi cos contra los abusos de la propaganda electoral en el mundo romano, in: C. Fernández – M. Limón – J. Gómez Pallarès – J. del Hoyo (edd.), Ex offi cina. Literatura epigráfi ca en verso, Sevilla 2013, 157–169).15 Cf. recently M. Carroll, ‘Vox tua nempe mea est’. Dialogues with the Dead in Roman Funerary Commemoration, Accordia Research Papers 11, 2007–2008, 37–80 and, more recently, S. Busch, Lautes und leises Lesen in der Antike, RhM 145, 2002, 1–45, esp. 30–33 (on inscriptions).16 Further on this see P. Kruschwitz, How the Romans Read Funerary Inscriptions: Neglected Evidence from the Quero-lus, RhM (forthcoming).

'I shall touch it with care and respect': à propos an hitherto neglected senarius from Roman Britain (EE VII 928 = RIB 659)

http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/70238/8/zpe%20204_kruschwitz.pdf

'I shall touch it with care and respect': à propos an hitherto neglected senarius from Roman Britain (EE VII 928 = RIB 659)

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Central Archive at the University of Reading