Epitaph for Sosia Elate Jonathan Prag Jonathan Prag John Fell OUP Research Fund ERC Advanced Grant no.885040 Jonathan Prag original data collection and editing Marta Fogagnolo editing, translation and commentary James Cummings conversion to EpiDoc James Chartrand site construction and encoding Valeria Vitale editing of geo data Michael Metcalfe museum data collection Alex Antoniou EpiDoc editing and English translation Simona Stoyanova standardisation of template and tidying up encoding system automated or batch processes I.Sicily ISic001325 492931 39101696 140819 316237 http://sicily.classics.ox.ac.uk/inscription/ISic001325 10.5281/zenodo.4353459 Licensed under a Creative Commons-Attribution 4.0 licence. Italy Sicily Catania Museo Civico di Catania 845 Ancient Greek

Marble cinerary urn without lid (lost after discovery), on sides simple palmettes and ram protomi.

marble urn 21.5 36.5 27 chiselled

Regular letters: lunate Ε, Σ, cursive Μ. Φ with an extended upright and Υ at l. 4 with extended slanted bars.

Lines 1-4 17-25 Interlineation line 1 to 2 not recorded Catina Catania 37.49223, 15.07041 Second half of 1st century — first half of 2nd century CE Found c. 1624 in “vinea la Mura”, a vineyard close to the city wall. Observed by Walther “in Foro Merceri seu Mercati-Lunae, apud Vinc. Maioranam”, in the wall of the Loggia by Carrera, in Museo Biscari by Torremuzza and Kaibel, later by Korhonen in magazzino superiore, Collezione Biscari, formerly sala IX 24. None

Encoded following the latest EpiDoc guidelines

Taxonomies for ISicily controlled values

ISicily glyphs authority list

Julian Calendar

 English Italian Ancient Greek Latin Hebrew Phoenician Punic Oscan Elymian Sikel Sikan funerary James Cummings autogenerated EpiDoc output from database Alex Antoniou Epidoc editing and English translation Simona Stoyanova normalised Unicode Simona Stoyanova updated list of languages Simona Stoyanova added EDCS numbers Simona Stoyanova restructured bibliography Updated Zenodo DOI renumbered files, uris and references Marta Fogagnolo revised the text encoding, added dimensions, translations and commentary I.Sicily with the permission of the Assessorato Regionale dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identità Siciliana - Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identità Siciliana I.Sicily with the permission of the Assessorato Regionale dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identità Siciliana - Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identità Siciliana
Σοσίᾳ Ἐλάτῃ γλυκυτάτῃ Ἀφροδείσιος σύμβιος
Text based on photographs Korhonen observes that the name of the deceased could be in the nominative form, but the presence of the attribute suggests that it is dative.

To the sweetest Sosia Elate, Aphrodeisios, her husband.

Alla dolcissima Sosia Elate, Aphrodisios, il marito.

The epitaph presents a less common structure, with the name of the deceased probably in dative and the name of the dedicant in nominative followed by an attribute that qualifies his relationship with the deceased (see Korhonen 2004: 87). To be excluded is the interpretation of the epitaph as two nominatives, the first of the name of the deceased, the latter of the name of the dedicant because of the attribute γλυκυτάτη. The indication of the age of the deceased and the dedication verb is omitted. The gentilicium Sosia testifies that the deceased belonged the gens Sosia; her cognomen Ἐλάτη is also attested in an inscription of imperial age from Dikaiarchia-Puteoli (CIL 10.2209). The name of the husband, Ἀφροδείσιος, is well attested in several inscriptions of South Italy (LGPN 3A: 86).

Gualtherus 1624 [1625] no.45 https://biblio.inscriptiones.org/epig10001931 Amico 1741 246 no.1 https://biblio.inscriptiones.org/epig10002186 Torremuzza 1769 142 no.43 https://biblio.inscriptiones.org/epig10002084 Torremuzza 1784 149 no.50 https://biblio.inscriptiones.org/epig10002083 Ferrara 1829 345 no.1 https://biblio.inscriptiones.org/epig10002005 14.0504 https://biblio.inscriptiones.org/epig10001072 129 https://biblio.inscriptiones.org/epig10000028 3.5706 https://biblio.inscriptiones.org/epig10001252 Libertini 1930 73 no.152 ph https://biblio.inscriptiones.org/epig10001871