Un nuovo tabularius e altro materiale epigrafico inedito da Karales

Piergiorgio Floris

2024-01-01

---

Abstract

Examination of two Roman epitaphs discovered in Cagliari in 2020. Although found in a funerary area, both were divorced from their original context. The first one is engraved on a marble slab almost fully reassembled from three fragments. The slab bears the complete epitaph of a man. The deceased was a lib(ertus) tab(ularius) (less likely a lib(ertus) tab(ularii)), i.e., a person in charge of a tabularium, a structure likely located in Karales whose nature escapes us (was it a public or a private tabularium?). In case the tabularium was a public one, it could also be that the deceased was an ex servus publicus. The inscription is also remarkable for its troubled compositional history (more than one person was probably involved in its execution) and engraving technique. Among other things, the onomastics of the persons mentioned therein gives the opportunity to study the spread of the imperial nomen gentilicium Aurelius in Karales and the rest of Sardinia. The second epitaph, which is incomplete, is engraved on a slab and concerns the freedman of a woman possibly belonging to the gens Manlia. The titulus, noteworthy onomastically and chronologically (it may be the oldest of those so far identified in the northwestern funerary area of the city), contains the first Sardinian attestation of the C retroversa (and the first of the term heredes in Caralitan epigraphy).