CONCERNING THE REVISION OF CIL II 265

Abstract

In the mid-18th century a farmer accidentally discovered, between Armês and Lameiras, Sintra – “Western zone” of the municipium of Olisipo – a roman stone with a double epitaph engraved in two text columns side by side. Of this finding, meanwhile lost again, we have only a transcription kept in the Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa (COD. 425 fl. 94), hand-written by an anonymous antiquarian who observed the monument in loco. He didn’t, however, realize the epigraph was distributed in two columns, and he transcribed the full lines from left to right not minding the separation between columns or even between lines. As a result, he left a chaotic and, at first sight, incomprehensible text. Hübner (in CIL II 265) attempted to reconstitute the original text but, having assumed that the first word, which he deemed an abbreviation, was common to both epitaphs, he took a complicated and equivocal course of reasoning that relied on the proposition of two pretensely palaeohispanic anthroponyms completely unknown: *Alteciniris (gen.) e *Licassi (gen.); and also on an augustal status held by slaves. Due to the authority of the author of CIL II these anomalies were accepted by other investigators, some of high prestige, although others showed some
dissent and skepticism. Returning to the original manuscript, we looked in it for clues that might allow, without preconceptions, to elaborate a new reconstitution of the original epigraph. The result is a normal text, devoid of irregularities or inconsistencies: nothing more than the parallel epitaphs of two slaves, Augustinus G(aii) Licini(i) Bassi ser(vus) and Euticus L(ucii) Cassi(i) Alteris ser(vus) – without any religious role but, solely, their identifying onomastic elements. Later, at the same archaeological site, a further inscription appeared that somehow helps to confirm our reconstitution: the funerary stele of [-] Licinius Bassus.