Epitaph of Lucius Petronius Primo

Type of verse

• Type of verse: Dactílico (dístico elegíaco)
• Verse/line correspondence: No
• Prose/verse distinction: Si

Epigraphic edition

Text divided into verses and metric signs

Vxor cara viro monumentum fecit amanti. ll|lww|l/ww|ll|lww|l~

     Optaram  in manibus coniugis occidere;    ll|lHww|l||lww|lww|~

quem quia fata nimis rapuerunt tempore iniquo, lww|lww|l/ww|ll|lww|l~

     ossibus opto tuis sit pia terra levis.              lww|llw|l||lww|lww|~

Translation

Lucius Petronius Primus, son of Lucius, lies buried here. Your dear wife has built this tomb for her loving husband; how I should have wished to die in the arms of my husband! But as the fates snatched you away at such an untimely hour, I wish that the welcoming earth may rest lightly on your bones.

Bibliography

Roa 1629, 42; ex eo pendent omnes: Doni ms. s. XVII, 12, 29; Muratori 1739–1742, 1386 n. 10; Burmann 1773, lib. 4, 207; Meyer 1835, 1319; Ponz 1792, t. 17, 191; Hübner, II 1504 (inde Bücheler, CLE 1138, cuius exemplum in linguam Hispanicam vertit Fernández Martínez 1998-99; Cholodniak 1904, 4; Vives, ILER 5792; Ordóñez Agulla 1988, 159; Thigpen 1995, 64–66, quae in linguam Anglicam vertit; González Fernández, CILA II, 772; id., II2/5, 1236; Martín Camacho CLEB ES, SE11). – Cf. Hübner 1899, 349–350; Mariner 1952, 110. 117. 170. 209; Hernández Pérez 2001a, 23–25. 34. 40. 49. 133. 173. 242.

Comentary

No variation in terms of reading, but a variation of ordinatio: Hübner (et inde alii), edits it divided in verses, since Roa usually neglects the layout of the text in the epigraphs. In the carmina, however, the ordinatio does not always cause that the epigraphic line and the verse coincide; therefore we present how it is done in the first source, although it is strange that words are written divided between two lines in CLE, such as in ll. 3-4 and 5-6, and quite improbable that l. 6 had so little text if it is compared, especially, with the following line. 

Elegiac distichs; Note the choice of optaram instead of optaveram, metri causa, and the synalepha in l. 2, not very frequent in pentameters. The pentameter of the first distich closes with a four-syllabled verse, instead of the common two-syllabled (cf. Luque 1994, pp. 67-91). 

It features the burial topos which states that the survivor wishes he or she had died in place of the loved one, cf. CLE 1208,1 and 6; CLE 1302,3-4; CLE 708,6 and 8; etc.). On the description of death in the arms of a loved one, cf. CLE 386, 5-6; and Gómez Pallarès PECP, T8,14-16. Ll. 7-8: feature the commonplace of the recrimination of the fates for having snatched the deceased from the living world (cf. Lier 1903: 460-462; Hernández Pérez 2001a: 34-48). Ll. 9-10 are a variant of the formula s(it) t(ibi) t(erra) l(evis) (cf. Fernández Martínez 2011b). 

Link to DB