Epitaph of Plauta
created: Transcription from stone (CDL).
source date: Perhaps second half of first or first half of second century AD
language: ar; en; fr; de; grc; grc-Latn; el; he
availability: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Deed Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. All citation, reuse or distribution of this work must contain a link back to DOI: https://doi.org/10.60760/unibo/igcyrgvcyr2 and the filename (IGCyr000000 or GVCyr000), as well as the year of consultation. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)

[...], pp. 161-162, n. 11, fig. 10, also p. 504, whence [...], 1914, p. 477; [...] 5873; [...], p. 317; [...] 012. Cf. [...], n. 758; [...], p. 30; [...], p. 16; [...], pp. 324-325.

ἐτῶν κ.

Τὴν διτόκον μονόπαιδα θεῆις ἰκέλην ὅδε Πλαύταν ·
νούσωι καὶ τοκετῶι τύμβος ἔχει φθιμένην ·
ἀκλέα δ’ ἐν σκοτίηι πηνίσματα καὶ λάλος αὔτως ·
κερκὶς ὁμοῦ πινυτῆι κεῖται ἐπ’ ἠλεκάτηι ·
καὶ τῆς μὲν βιότου κλέος ᾄδεται ὅσσον ἐκείνης ,
τόσσον καὶ μελέου πένθος ἀεὶ πόσιος.

θεῆις ἰκέλην[^1][^a1]

[^a1: θεῆις ἰκέλην | θείῃ Σικελήν | θέῃ Σικελὴν]

[^1: Peek did not know Roussel's reading for BE]

A l'âge de vingt ans

Ayant deux fois enfanté, mais mère d'un seul enfant, Plauta semblable aux déesses

est enfermée dans ce tertre, décédée de la maladie d'enfantement.

Dans l'ombre, sans gloire reposent avec elle la laine qu'elle fila et de la même manière sa babillante

navette repose près de son habile fuseau.

Et de sa vie on chante autant la gloire

que le deuil de son époux malheureux pour toujours.

Aged twenty years

Twice giving birth and once a mother, Plauta, equal to the goddesses

is shut up into this mound, deceased from the illness of childbirth.

In the shadow, deprived of glory, lie with her the spun wools, as well as the babbling

shuttle near the wise spindle.

And of her life the glory is so much celebrated

as the grief of her husband forever unfortunate.

Di anni 20.

Avendo partorito due volte e madre di un solo bambino, Plauta, eguale alle dee,

è racchiusa in questo sepolcro, morta di parto.

Nell'ombra, senza gloria, giace con lei la lana che filava, come pure la garrula

spoletta vicino all'abile fuso.

E della vita di costei la gloria è tanto celebrata

quanto il dolore del suo sposo per sempre infelice.

For the findspot, Robinson (from De Cou's papers) wrote «found face up in front of tomb on left of Fresco Tomb». Combined with Norton's archive, this was interpreted as in front of tomb N22 Cassels by Santucci in [...]. So also [...], p. 30. However, the provenance is rather tomb N21, which is the next one to the left (i.e. to the South-East) of tomb N22 (so-called Fresco Tomb in the Norton archive).

The reading of verse-line 1 was already established by Roussel in 1914. However this was not known in Germany to Keil-Preisigke and still not to Peek, who presented it independently in 1931.

As the antithesis δίτοκον μονόπαιδα shows, Plauta died while giving birth to her second child and the baby also died on that occasion, νούσωι καὶ τοκέτωι being thus probably a hendiadyn.

Metrical analysis: three quite regular elegiac couplets.