Archaeology and Memory – XIII

Funerary stele of Optata Fadia. Stele with a double niche surmounted by a pediment with corner acroteria and a central rosette. The paired arches are supported by two lateral pilasters adorned with very fine floral decoration. The busts of the two women are rendered truncated below the waist and conclude in a framed inscription panel bearing the names of the deceased. The epigraphic text reads:

 

OPTATA FADIA T(iti)) F(ilia) / STATIA ;

L(ucius) VALLIVS L(uci) F(ilius) RVFVS / L(ucius) VALLIVS L(uci) L(ibertus) NAM [---] / M(arcus) VALLIVS L(uci) F(ilius) MAR [---] / L(ocus) P(edum) Q(uadratorum) X [---]

 

"Optata Fadla, daughter of Titus - Statia”;

“Lucius Valllus Rufus, son of Lucius; Lucius Valllus Nammus, freedman of Lucius; Marcus Valllus Mar [?], son of Lucius, burial plot of X [?] square feat ."

Steles with portraits were a type of monument used by the middle classes. especially freedmen and were popular in Aquileia in the ist century AD. The monument depicts two elderly women, coiffed in accordance with Julio-Claudian fashion and adorned with their jewelry, represented in a dynamic pose while presenting pomegranate fruits as offerings to the chthonic divinity. The sober, realistic character of the portraiture, together with the typology of the costume and of the monument itself, supports a dating to the early decades of the 1st century AD, consistent with the epigraphic evidence

 

Source Museum notice

 

Limestone stele No. 203

175 x 77 x 18 cm

First thierd of 1st century AD

Aquileia, Museo Archeologico Nazionale

 

 

Done