PEDIMENT DEDICATED TO BONA DEA VENUS, ROME Alison E. Cooley AEC/ASHL ANChandler.3.12.xml Oxford Ashmolean Museum ANChandler.3.12 AshLI 11

A marble architrave surmounted by a pediment with egg and dart moulding, with a square block attached to its apex (0.25 0.815 0.07). This block may have been intended to bear a decorative element or small cult statue: there is a small rectangular hole in its top surface. In the centre of the pediment is a wreath with ribbons floating to left and right. There is damage at both ends of the architrave, whose original width in total must have been around 1.20.

The text is inscribed on the frieze below (inscribed area 0.07 0.815), both ends of which are damaged. Line 1 has been centred. There are sporadic triangular interpuncts. The reading of the text in line 2 is problematic. After INVICTA, there are traces of a letter which has been erased. Gude (in Hesselius) provides two different sets of line-divisions (both wrong). The text from the start of line 2 is derived from earlier autopsy of the inscription, before it had been damaged.

0.023 (line 1), 0.026 (line 2). Although the letters in line 1 are shorter than in the subsequent line, their more generous spacing makes them the more prominent part of the text. Line 2: judging from the RTI scan, the letter erased in antiquity is an E. This supports the suggestion by Iorizzo (2009) that the text was first inscribed inaccurately in the form INVICTAE SPIRAE PHAEDIMIANA, and that the final letter in INVICTAE was subsequently erased in an attempt to correct the mistake, but that the stonecutter forgot to erase the final letter in SPIRAE as well. The letter P in PHAEDIMIANA also remains incomplete, a more extreme version of the P in SPIRA which is similarly not joined up. The fact that the letter begins to curve around suggests that it is a P rather than a T; it also lacks the serif to the left of the vertical stroke which can be seen in the letter T twice earlier in the line in ET and INVICTA. The first A in PHAEDIMIANA lacks its cross-bar. The exact findspot of this inscription is unknown. AD c.171-c.230 It was seen and copied by Giovanni Zaratino Castellini (1570-1641) at the Palazzo of Cardinal Crescenzi, near the Pantheon in Rome, at some time between 1611 (when Pier Paolo Crescenzi was created cardinal: Polverini Fosi 1984) and 1627 (by which time the stone had been transferred to England into Arundel’s collection). Three of Castellini’s folios were bought by Garrucci in around 1858, and subsequently published by Minasi in Civiltà Cattolica of 1893 (Ferrua 1958). Sirmond, Gude, and Langermann derived their accounts from Castellini (Brouwer 1989; Ferrua 1958: pp.126-27), whilst Doni took his text from Menestrier. Gude (in 1662) and Reinesius (1692), however, recorded that the inscription had been seen by Langermann at the house of the sculptor Cristoforo Stati near the church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte on the Pincian (near the Spanish steps), who died in 1619 (this is also repeated by Chandler 1763: Syllabus Pars tertia, p.xvi). At least thirteen inscriptions from Cardinal Crescenzi’s residence at Rome ended up among the Arundel Marbles by 1628, when Selden’s first edition of Marmora Arundelliana appeared. Both C3-12 and C3-13 were displayed initially in Arundel House in London (Selden 1629; Iorizzo 2009: pp. 20-22), being subsequently given to the University of Oxford along with other inscribed marbles from the Arundel Collection in 1667 by Henry Howard, grandson of Thomas Howard 2nd Earl of Arundel (who died in 1646) (Prideaux 1676; Angelicoussis 2004: pp.143-44). The Arundel marbles were first displayed in the ‘Garden of Antiquities’ outside the new Sheldonian Theatre from 1668/9 (Sturdy and Moorcraft 1999), and were subsequently transferred indoors in 1715 to ‘The Marble School’, an upper gallery in the Bodleian Quadrangle. In 1749, they were transferred downstairs to the ground floor in the former School of Moral Philosophy, and at some point then ended up in the basement of the (Old) Ashmolean Museum on Broad Street (now the Museum of the History of Science) (Munby 2013). The Ashmolean Museum in its current location behind the University Galleries was opened in 1894, and finally the University Galleries and Ashmolean were amalgamated by statute in 1908. The pediment is on display in the Rome Gallery. Photograph Photograph
Bonae Deae Veneri Cnidiae D ecimus I unius Annianus Hymenaeus et Invictae spirae Phaedimiana dono dedit

To the Good Goddess Venus of Cnidus. Decimus Iunius Annianus Hymenaeus and the sodality Invicta Phaedimiana gave as a gift.

BONAE DEAE / VENERI CNIDIAE (Gude in Hesselius – but he is simply fitting his text on the page, not observing line divisions) D. IVNIVS (Sirmond; Doni cod. Vat. Lat. 7113; Doni BN Naples MS G.XII.75; Selden; Prideaux; Reinesius; Maittaire); VNIVS (Chandler); HVMENAEVS (Selden); HYMENEVS (Spon); HYMAENAEIIS (Gude in Hesselius, with ligatured MA); INVICIA ASPERETEIA EDIMIANAE D. D. (Castellini – Ferrua 1958: p.128; Sirmond, apud Reinesius, from Castellini; Gude, in Hesselius, from Castellini); SPIRAE/ PHAEDIMIANAE DO (Doni cod. Vat. Lat. 7113; Doni BN Naples MS G.XII.75; IN VICIA (Selden); SPIRΛEPIIΛEDIMIANA (Selden); SPIRAE PIIΛEDIMIANA and VINICIA. SPERATA. PHAEMIDIANA (Reinesius); VINICIA. SPVR LIB. PHAEDIMIANA (Gude, in Hesselius); ET FIAEDIMIANA (Chandler); SPIRAETFIΛEDIMIANA [i.e. Spira et Phaedimiana] (Orelli); INVICTA SPIRA ET HAEDIMIANA (Spon; Hübner in CIL, cited incorrectly by Brouwer as HAEDIMANIA); SPIRA [P]HAEDIMIANA (ILS - Dessau); INVICTAE SPIRAE PHAEDIMIANA carved in error, erasure of E at the end of INVICTA, but in error E at end of SPIRAE left in place (Iozzino)

This small pediment was part of a shrine dedicated to the goddess Bona Dea Venus Cnidia (Chioffi 1993: p.201). Rather than this being the deity usually known as the Bona Dea, it seems that the title ‘Good Goddess’ is here being used as an epithet for Cnidian Venus (Brouwer 1989: p.35; Marcattili 2010: p.29). It is dedicated jointly by an individual and a group of worshippers, or spira. A spira is an association of members involved in the cult of a particular deity. Given that the title of a spira may be derived from its founder’s name, we may make a connection between this inscription to Cnidian Venus set up by the spira Phaedimiana and C3-13, where a Fedimus (i.e. = Phaedimos) records his founding of a shrine to this cult (cf. Brouwer 1989: p.36).

D. Iunius Annianus Hymenaeus is probably a freedman (Solin 2003: vol. I p.569), his second cognomen Hymenaeus representing his membership of the spira. The name is particularly suitable in this cultic context since Hymenaeus was a son of Venus and Liber according to some mythological genealogies (Servius, On the Aeneid 4.127). A fragmentary marble slab found near the second columbarium of the vigna Codini on the via Appia includes a list of names of the magistri quinquennales (presiding officials) of the cultores (worshippers) of Venus Cnidia, each of whose names ends with Hymenaeus (CIL 6.4872). This has been dated to the first half of the third century AD by Iorizzo (2009: pp. 22-25), on the basis of the frequent use of the gentilician name Aurelius (which would suggest a date after the Constitutio Antoniniana in AD 212). This in turn suggests a date ante quem for this pediment.

Sirmond MS. Paris suppl. 1419 = Lat. 10808, no.243; Doni cod. Vat. Lat. 7113 f.42’; Doni BN Naples, MS G.XII.75 fol.51 no.4 (following Menestrier); Selden (1629) p.50 no.1; Prideaux (1676) p.91, no.24; Reinesius (1682) p.127, no.92 (following Selden); Spon (1685) p.94 (following Prideaux); Hesselius (= Gude) (1731) p.38 no.10 (Arundel collection, following Reinesius) + p.54 no.3 (on the Pincian); Maittaire (1732) p.34, no.42; Chandler (1763) p.131, no.12; Donatus (1765) p.33 no.3 (following Spon); Orelli (1828) vol.I no.1522; CIL VI.1 no.76 [Hübner] (1876); CIL VI.4 fasc.2, p. 3003 (1902); CIL VI.4 fasc.3 p.3755 (1933); ILS 3515 (Dessau 1955); Brouwer (1989) p.35 no.24 + pl.XI.24; Iorizzo (2009) 20-22, 28-34 = AE 2009 no.159

Online: EDCS 17200178 [accessed 15/08/16] Photograph (EDCS). EDR158754 [last updated 29/07/16, Orlandi] [accessed 15/08/16]

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