CIPPUS WITH INSCRIPTION, AFTER 6 CE. DRUGSTORE MUSEUM COHORS VI PR(ÆTORIA) / MVNIT / PER P(EDES) ∞∞ [---]CLX[---?] "The sixth Prætorian cohort made (this) for 2160 (Roman) feet". Damage to the third line makes other letters illegible. The numeration is not our familiar Roman numerals, but uses what we think of as the infinity symbol, ∞, in place of the more familiar M to indicate 1000. It's used twice here, so 2000. Then comes C, 1000, then the upside-down T which is an alternate for L, 50, and X, 10. Adding this up gives us a significant distance, 2160 feet or 640 metres, which probably refers to roadworks, or, less likely, hydraulic works, both of which fell into the purview of the Prætorians. The crumbly stone of the cippus is tufo lionato, or Monteverde tufo, distinguished by its yellow colour.

For #EpigraphyTuesday we find a damaged C1 CE #cippus from along the #viaPortuensis west of central #Rome that records a probable road repair by the sixth #Prætorian Cohort, but using unfamiliar #Roman numerals cut with elegant precision into the yellow tufo. #AncientBluesky 🏺

MOSAIC FLOOR, TOMB A, 130-170 CE. DRUGSTORE MUSEUM This black and white mosaic pavement shows a broad black band around the exterior, then a frame of guilloches and two narrow black bands on either side against a white background. The mosaic is not especially sophisticated and the subject is familiar from other middle-class tombs of the C2 CE. Four kantharoi in the corners sprout grapevines, and four figures, one per side, are harvesting the grapes. The vines overlap a central circular frame containing a male figure with a double axe, about to hack at a separate vine. This is Lycurgus, king of Thrace, who is attacking what had been, a moment before, the nymph Ambrosia, but she had been compassionately turned into a vine by Dionysus and is about to wrap around the frustrated Lycurgus and trap him. This transformation represents the consoling rebirth of the natural world, and the circular frame evokes Aeon, god of cyclical time.

#MosaicMonday presents us with a #floor #mosaic from a #tomb of the "middling sort", which is the class below the rich but above the artisanate, a significant commissioner of funerary art in #Rome and the provinces. Here we are in a #necropolis along the ancient #viaPortuensis. #AncientBluesky 🏺

SARCOPHAGUS WITH CLIPEI, C. 200-250 CE. BATHS OF DIOCLETIAN This adult-sized sarcophagus was found in a tomb in the same cemetery at the corner of via Portuense and via Belluzzo which we can visit in the Drugstore Museum, which displays tombs A and B. This sarcophagus comes from tomb D, also found in 1967 but not part of the museum. It is a tub form (a lenòs) coffin in expensive Proconnesian marble with its distinctive grey stripes. When it was found, it contained the skeleton of a ten-year-old child. The sarcophagus is made of symmetrical strigilations divided down the middle, and on both sides of the front are a clipeus, at left of the face of Helios, at left that of Selene, the gods of the sun and moon. Both faces are the same, and represent the face of the deceased, passing from day to night.

I think of you night and day. #SarcophagusSaturday offers us a #sarcophagus striking in its simplicity, now in the #BathsofDiocletian but originally in a #necropolis along the ancient #viaPortuensis outside #Rome. #Helios has a radiate crown and #Selene a crescent moon. #AncientBluesky 🏺