A CHILD’S EPITAPH, ROME? Alison E. Cooley AEC/ASHL ANChandler.3.126.xml Oxford Ashmolean Museum ANChandler.3.126 AshLI 125

A fragmentary squarish slab of white marble (in a modern mount) (0.20 0.215 0.014), with some minor chipping around the edges. The stone is incomplete, having been broken off along the bottom edge.

The inscription is placed within a single-line frame, with just DM acting as a heading above the frame. Since the bottom of the single-line frame is not extant it is impossible to be sure whether any text has been lost, but it is unlikely that much has been lost, at most perhaps one line declaring the months and days lived. Simple interpuncts, except at line ends. Line 3 is roughly centred.

 : 0.016 (line 1); 0.022 (lines 2-4); 0.019 (lines 5-6). Grotta Ferrata near Tusculum first half of the second century AD, on the basis of the use of the formula dis manibus, and the name Pomponius Hymnus, for which a second-century context is proposed by Solin 2003: vol.3, p.1263. According to Chandler (1763, p.xix), the inscription was found at Grotta Ferrata near Tusculum in 1723, but the source cited for this – Hearne’s preface to Chronica sive historia de rebus Glastoniensibus (1726) – does not appear to mention this inscription. As suggested in CIL, it may well have originated in Rome. It is one of the Latin inscriptions given to the University of Oxford by Richard Rawlinson in 1753 (Chandler 1763: p.xix), and at first kept in the University Collection in the Bodleian Library (Enright 1956: p.340). At some point it then ended up in the basement of the (Old) Ashmolean Museum on Broad Street (now the Museum of the History of Science) (Munby 2013), since it is included in the archive MS. ‘Marbles sent from Ashmolean Museum’ (p.35, no.177), a list of ancient marbles transferred in Jan. 1888 from the (Old) Ashmolean Museum basement room to the marble rooms of the Randolph Building on Beaumont Street, which had been built alongside the University Galleries. The Ashmolean Museum in its current location was built behind the University Galleries, was opened in 1894, and finally the University Galleries and Ashmolean were amalgamated by statute in 1908. It is currently on display in the Reading and Writing Gallery. photograph
dis manibus Caius Pomponius Hymnus Pomponiae Felicissimae vixit annis VIII

To the spirits of the dead. Gaius Pomponius Hymnus for Pomponia Felicissima, (who) lived 8 years.

The epitaph probably represents a commemoration by father to daughter, although such a relationship is not explicitly stated.

Chandler (1763) Part 3, Pl.IV.cxxvi, with drawing; CIL VI.4, fasc.2 no.36155 [Hübner] (1902)

Online: EDCS-23702410 [accessed 24/11/15]

Ashmolean Museum Department of Antiquities Marbles sent from Ashmolean Museum Chandler R. 1763 Marmora Oxoniensia Oxford Clarendon Press Enright B.J. 1956 Richard Rawlinson: collector, antiquary, and topographer (Bod. MS. D.Phil. d.1786) Munby J. 2013 A rare collection: Oxford museums past and present Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor H.Wiegel and M.Vickers Oxford BAR Int. ser. 2512 75-85 Solin H. 2003 Die griechischen Personennamen in Rom. Ein Namenbuch (2nd edn) 3 vols Berlin De Gruyter