EPITAPH OF FREEDWOMAN NONIA PRIMA, ROME (?) Alison E. Cooley AEC/ASHL ANChandler.3.72.xml Oxford Ashmolean Museum ANChandler.3.72 AshLI 71

An unadorned rectangular slab of white marble (0.113 0.245 0.025) imitating a tabula ansata (in a modern mount), with bottom left and right corners missing, and much of the right edge damaged. It consists of two contiguous fragments, one comprising the majority of what survives, the other a small fragment belonging to the bottom right. Damage beneath the last line of the inscription has been repaired with modern infill.

Triangular interpuncts occur sporadically.

 0.027 (line 1); 0.025, with tall I, 0.028 (line 2); 0.019, with tall I, 0.02 (line 3). It is of unknown provenance, but probably originates from Rome. first century AD (use of formula HSE; onomastics) (Solin 1996: vol. 1, p.146). It was first recorded in Oxford by Prideaux as part of the Arundel Collection, which was given to the University of Oxford by Henry Howard, Earl of Arundel, in 1667 (Prideaux 1676). The Arundel marbles were first displayed in the ‘Garden of Antiquities’ outside the new Sheldonian Theatre from 1668/9 (Sturdy and Moorcraft 1999). The inscriptions 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 was built behind the University Galleries, was opened in 1894, and finally the University Galleries and Ashmolean were amalgamated by statute in 1908. The epitaph is currently in a storeroom. Photograph
Nonia Publi liberta Prima hic sita est

Nonia Prima, freedwoman of Publius, is buried here.

This simple burial marker commemorates a freedwoman.

Prideaux (1676) p.102, no.30; Maittaire (1732) p.43, no.130; Chandler (1763) p.136, no.72; CIL VI.3 no.23052 [Hübner] (1886). Cooley (2012) pp.376-77 no.68, Fig. 3.9.

Online: EDCS-13300246 [accessed 17/07/14]

Chandler R. 1763 Marmora Oxoniensia Oxford Clarendon Press Cooley A.E. 2012 The Cambridge Manual of Latin Epigraphy Cambridge Cambridge University Press Maittaire M. 1732, 2nd edn Marmorum, Arundellianorum, Seldenianorum, Aliorumque Academiae Oxoniensi Donatorum London William Bowyer 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 Prideaux H. 1676 Marmora Oxoniensia ex Arundellianis, Seldenianis aliisque conflata Oxford Solin H. 1996 Die stadtrömischen Sklavennamen Stuttgart Steiner Sturdy D. and N. Moorcraft 1999 Christopher Wren and Oxford’s garden of antiquities Minerva 10.1 25-28