ISic001899: Fragment of a Latin(?) inscription

© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.
© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.
ID
ISic001899
Language
Latin
Status
draft
Text type
unknown
Object type
plaque

Edition

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Apparatus criticus

  • Text from photograph;
  • 1: The BM website rightly notes that the identification of the letter is uncertain, but a Latin V is as plausible as anything else (the BM's hypothetical Etruscan L is however excessively speculative and implausible in the context of a marble text from Agrigentum)

Physical description

Support

Description
A small fragment of white marble, broken on all sides and with surface corrosion. No measurements are available.
Object type
plaque
Object condition
fragment
Dimensions
height: cm, width: cm, depth: cm

Material

Description
marble
Type > subtype
stone.marble > unspecified

Inscription

Layout
Single letter visible
Text condition
incomplete
Technique
chiselled
Pigment
No data
Lettering
No data
Letter heights
Line 1: mm
Interlinear heights
Interlineation line 1 to 2: mm

Provenance

Place of origin
Agrigentum
Provenance found
Obtained by George Dennis from Agrigento and given to the British Museum in 1863.

Current location

Place
London, Sicilia
Repository
The British Museum
1863,0728.237
Autopsy
No autopsy

Date

Roman imperial, i.e. first to third century CE (AD 1 - AD 300)
Evidence
lettering

Text type

unknown

commentary

The fragment appears unpublished, beyond the presentation on the British Museum website, at: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1863-0728-237. While it is uncertain whether this is Latin, or indeed a letter V, the use of white marble makes a Latin text of the imperial period much more likely than anything else. The piece appears to be one of a substantial number of minor pieces collected by George Denis in Agrigento prior to 1863 when they were acquired by the Museum.

Bibliography

Digital editions
  • TM: -
  • EDR: -
  • EDH: -
  • EDCS: -
  • PHI: -

Citation and editorial status

Editor
Jonathan Prag
Principal contributor
Jonathan Prag
Contributors
Last revision
2/28/2025