Epitaph for Cesia Celsa

Type of verse

• Type of verse: Dactílico (dístico elegíaco)
• Verse/line correspondence: Si
• Prose/verse distinction: Si

Epigraphic edition

Text divided into verses and metric signs

Quod voto petiere suis plerumque parentes ll|l/kk|lk/k|l/l|lkk|l~

    cuncta tibi dignae, Caesia, contigerant:  lkk|ll|l||lkk|lkk|~

lanifici praeclara fides, pietatis alumna, lkk|l/l|lk/k|l/kk|lkk|l~

     priscae praecipue fama pudicitiae.  ll|lkk|l||lkk|lkk|~

Translation

Caesia Celsa, daughter of Titus, sixty-five years of age, is buried here. What parents often beseech for their own with a prayer, all that Caesia, you had been deservedly granted. You have been exemplary working with wool, nourished with family feeling, but most of all famous for modesty like that of old. I beg you, passer-by, to say: ‘May the earth rest lightly on you’. The tomb measures twelve feet on each side.

Bibliography

Burmann 1759–1773, II, 214, lib. IV, n. 277; Hübner, II 1699, cf. II p. 703. 872 et EE VIII p. 349–350. 352 (inde Bücheler, CLE 1123, cuius exemplum in linguam Hispanicam vertit Fernández Martínez 1998-99; Cholodniak 1904, 1168; Acedo 1928, 74–75 [= Don Lope de Sosa n. 159, 79]; del Rivero 1933, 91 n. 339; Vives, ILER 5782; García Serrano 1968, n. 391, 594–595; Serrano Delgado 1987, 110; Gimeno 1988, 41; González Román – Mangas, CILA III 513, tab. 341 (ex titulo gypso expresso); Thigpen 1995 n. 6, 56–59, quae in linguam Anglicam vertit; González Román – Stylow, II2/5, 191; Velázquez Soriano 1996, 98–99; del Hoyo in Fernández Martínez, CLEB, J17, cum im. phot, qui in linguam Hispanicam vertit. – Cf. Stowasser 1905, 235; Shackleton 1952, 329; Mariner 1952, 92, 97, 116, 191; Serrano Delgado 1987, 72 et 110; Hernández Pérez 2001a, 305, 166–167, 170, 251, 254, 256, 278, 285–286; Medina 2015, 96.

Apparatus

1 L(ucii) f(ilia) omnes praeter González Román – Stylow. – 4 conucerint Acedo; contigerunt Schrader in Burmann. – 5 praeclarae Acedo; fide Schrader in Burmann.

Comentary

Two elegiac distichs plus a possible pentameter with an initial hypermetric hemistich. Both hexameters have trihemimeral, trochaic and hepthemimeral caesurae. 

Agreement ad sensum between the relative quod (l.3) and the substantive adjective cuncta (l.4). It is not necessary to read quod as an incorrect spelling of quot (Meyer in Bücheler) or to correct to quae (Schrader in Burmann). The first distich also occurs in the nearby Igabrum (II2/5,330, CO73). Alliteration in all verses: l. 3: P; l. 4: C; ll. 5 and 6: P. 

Praises the feminine virtues of lanificium, pietas and pudicitia, a topos in Latin epigraphical poetry (cf. Hernández Pérez166). Lanifica praeclara fides is similar to priscae fama pudicitiae (Prop. 1,15,22: Argivae fama pudicitiae). Pietatis alumna appears in some carmina (CLE 12), in Ov., met. 14,443, and Varr., men. 141. 

The formula Q. Q. V. L. P, typical of the 1st c. AD. (cf. Stylow 1986), shows the dimensions of the tomb (see Rodríguez Neila 1991, 59-99). Caesia’s grave was a square space 3.60 x 3.60. 

Link to DB