Doctoral Dissertation EPITAPHIC CULTURE AND SOCIAL HISTORY IN LATE ANTIQUE SALONA (ca. 250 – 600 C.E.) by DORA IVANIŠEVIĆ Supervisor: Volker Menze Submitted to the Medieval Studies Department, Central European University, Budapest in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Medieval Studies CEU eTD Collection Budapest 2016 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, my thanks go to Volker Menze. The patience and support of my supervisor needs to be acknowledged publically. He has always had trust in me and given me the freedom to do things my way. I will be forever grateful for the words of compassionate encouragement that came when I needed them the most. Furthermore, a few other professors have left a lasting mark on me in various and wonderful ways: Alice, Cristian, and Niels. Dear Csilla, besides all the logistical help, thank you for your care and warmth. I would like to thank my dear colleague Mariana Bodnaruk, and my friends Željka Salopek and Reyhan Durmaz for their help with providing me with literature: they did plenty of scanning from Germany, Croatia, and US, and they did it with such ease and readiness that I was never shy or reluctant to ask for help. The online epigraphic databases of the international federation of Epigraphic Databases (EAGLE), as well as Clauss-Slaby, are impressive undertakings. I participated in the EpiDoc workshop and got a glimpse of the enthusiasm and vision that lie behind them, as well as of the painstaking technical and intellectual work and effort invested in them. These databases facilitate our research, enable us to conduct it from the comfort of our homes, at any hour of the day and night, speed it up and make it more sophisticated. I spent a year studying at Cornell University through the Reese-Miller scholarship awarded by the Telluride Association, whose generosity I wish to thank. My stay in Ithaca was a life-changing experience; I lived in the Telluride House and befriended some exceptionally interesting, smart, and good people, whom I carry in my mind and heart. With infinite love and appreaciation, to my mama Diana and tata Kolja, Zojica, Kristinka, and Sona. CEU eTD Collection ii Contents Acknowledgements II List of abbreviations IV List of figures V CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Topic of the Thesis 1 1.2 Epigraphic Legacy of Salona 3 1.3 Historical Overview of Salona 6 1.4 Overview of the Burial Grounds of Salona and the Late Antique Inscribed Tombs 10 1.5 Methodological Approach and Research Questions 19 CHAPTER 2: THE EPITAPHIC HABIT IN LATE ANTIQUITY 42 2.1 Epigraphic Habit during the First Three Centuries C.E.: Its Interpretations and Their Problems 42 2.2 “Christian” or “Late Antique” Epitaphic Habit (ca. 250-600 C. E.) 48 CHAPTER 3: THE COST OF A STONE FUNERARY MONUMENT 80 CHAPTER 4: SOCIAL GROUPS RECORDED IN EPITAPHS (CA. 1-250 C.E.) 91 CHAPTER 5: LATE ANTIQUE INSCRIPTIONS AND SOCIAL HISTORY IN SALONA (CA. 250-600) 114 5.1 Methods and Problems 114 5.2 What’s in a Name? 121 5.3 Non-Funerary Epigraphy: People and Nomenclature 128 5. 4 Funerary Epigraphy: People and Nomenclature 150 5.5 Funerary Epigraphy: The Titles, Offices and Occupations 178 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUDING REMARKS 189 Appendix 1: Maps and Figures 193 Appendix 2.A: Selected Late Antique Epitaphs From Salona (ca. 250-400 C.E.) – Data 209 Appendix 2.B: Selected Late Antique Epitaphs From Salona (ca. 401-600 C.E.) – Data 219 Appendix 3.A: Selected Late Antique Epitaphs From Salona (ca. 250-400 C.E.) – Transcriptions 229 Appendix 3.B: Selected Late Antique Epitaphs From Salona (ca. 401-600 C.E.) – Transcriptions 235 Bibliography 241 CEU eTD Collection iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AE Année Épigraphique BAR British Archaeological Reports BAΗD/VAHD Bullettino di archeologia e storia dalmata / Vjesnik za arheologiju i historiju dalmatinsku CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum EDB Epigraphic Database Bari http://www.edb.uniba.it/ EDCS Epigraphik-Datenbank Clauss-Slaby http://www.manfredclauss.de/gb/index.html EDH/HD Epigraphic Database Heidelberg http://edh-www.adw.uni-heidelberg.de/home EDR Epigraphic Database Roma http://www.edr-edr.it/English/index_en.php FS II Forschungen in Salona II: Der altchristliche Friedhof Manastirine: nach dem Materiale F. Bulic (1926). R. Egger FS III Forschungen in Salona III: Der altchristliche Friedhof Marusinac (1939). E Dyggve and R. Egger ILJUG Inscriptiones Latinae quae in Iugoslavia inter annos MCMXL et MCMLX repertae et editae sunt (1963). A. Šašel and J. Šašel ILS Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies JRS Journal of Roman Studies LSA “Last Statues of Antiquity” Database http://laststatues.classics.ox.ac.uk/ Salona III/S III Salona III: Recherches archéologiques franco-croates à Salone. Manastirine: Établissement CEU eTD Collection préromain, nécropole et basilique paléochrétienne à Salone (2000). N. Duval and E. Marin Salona IV/S IV Salona IV: Recherches archéologiques franco-croates à Salone. Inscriptions de Salone Chrétienne IVe-VIIe siècles (2010). E. Marin, N. Gauthier, and F. Prévot ZPE Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik iv LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1. Plan of Salona Fig. 2. Plan of Manastirine Cemetery Fig. 3a. Cemetery of Manastirine: Concentration of Sarcophagi Fig. 3b. Cemetery of Manastirine: Concentration of Graves “under Tiles.” Fig. 4. Development of the Limestone Sarcophagi of Local Production Fig. 5. The Drawing of the Sarcophagus of the ducenarius Antonius Taurus: execution technique Fig. 6. The Votive Inscription of the praeses M. Aurelius Iulius, 316-350 C.E. Fig. 7. The List of the ministri of a Collegium, the later 3rd century - 320 C.E. Fig. 8. The Funerary Slab of Pr(a)etorina, second half of the 3rd century Fig. 9. The Sarcophagus of the v(ir) h(onestissimus) Eutychianus, first half of the 5th century Fig. 10. The Sarcophagus of Antonius Taurus and Aelia Saturnina, late 3rd-4th century Fig. 11. The Stela of Aurelius Fortunius, Aurelia Vernantilla, Ursa, and Vernantianus, first half of the 4th century Fig. 12. The Piscina of Aurelius Marcianus and Aurelia Quintina, 4th century Fig. 13. The Sarcophagus of Aurelius Peculiaris and Aurelia Urbica, second half of the 4th century Fig. 14. The Sarcophagus of Constantius and Honoria, 375 C.E. Fig. 15. The Sarcophagus of Flavius Terentius and Flavia Talasia, 378 C.E. Fig. 16. The Sarcophagus of Iulia Aurelia Hilara and Aurelius Hecatus, first half of the 4th century CEU eTD Collection v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION “There is nothing to equal the beauty of a Latin votive or burial inscription: those few words graved on stone sum up with majestic impersonality all that the world need ever know of us.”1 These are the words that Marguerite Yourcenar imputed to the emperor Hadrian in her Memoirs of Hadrian, one of my favorite novels. On the other hand, as a researcher, I often get frustrated by their fragmentary state of preservation and by the scarcity of information recorded in the epitaphs. Yet there they are: thousands of them found on a single site representing - most of the times - the only written evidence from the cities and towns of the Roman Empire; both applies to Salona, the capital of the Roman province of Dalmatia. This dissertation builds upon the recent trends in localized studies of epigraphic evidence in order to explore the commemorative culture and people who availed themselves of it in late antique Salona (from the mid-third through the first decades of the seventh century). 1.1 Topic of the Thesis Inscriptions are often the only written evidence from the Roman provinces, and they, no matter how sketchy, inform us on various aspects of Roman history. More importantly, when epigraphic genre is conceptualized properly and their limitations are thus acknowledged, they provide us with a glimpse at the wider socio-economic sectors of a community, and are the indispensable source for writing the social history of Roman Empire at the local level. Inscriptions therefore present themselves as a supplement and often the corrective to the anecdotal evidence from literary sources. CEU eTD Collection Nevertheless, it has been recognized that the practice of setting up epitaphic monuments was socially and culturally contingent, whereby the main issue pertains to the usefulness of epitaphs for the 1 Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian, Grace Frick transl. (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1963), at p. 28. 1 socio-demographic inquiry. Namely, the question is to what extent epitaphs, the source material inherently pertinent to socio-demographic analysis, reflect the demographic and socio-economic structures of an urban environment. The results have been largely negative: epitaphs neither represent a random sample of the population nor are certain categories of data recorded there accurate. Regarding the social composition of the “epitaphic population,” P. R. C. Weaver has succinctly addressed its relevance and the difficulty of illuminating it: “Determination of status is at the heart of most problems that arise in the study of the sub-equestrian classes of Roman society under the Empire. Unfortunately, along with chronology, it is also the most intractable problem for these social levels.”2 The question of the social distribution of epitaphs is essential for our understanding of the Roman epigraphic habit, and for the demographic and socio-economic urban history. This thesis examines two related topics, specifically the topic of the epitaphic culture, namely of the motivation to inscribe an epitaph in late antiquity, and that of the social profile of the epitaphic population in late antique Salona. I have based my analysis on the 188 sufficiently preserved epitaphs dated to from the mid- third to the beginning of the seventh century. The Appendix 2 tabulates the data from the sample across the categories of the commemorator and the deceased.