ISic003343: A late antique terminus?
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Edition
Apparatus criticus
- Text as reported by Manganaro;
- a.6: Manganaro transcribes the fourth character as "[", but it is impossible to confirm this from the photograph which shows significant damage to the letter space.
Physical description
Support
- Description
- Described by Manganaro as 'un parallelepipedo rettangolare di arenaria' (a quadrangular cippus), recovered during ploughing and so damaged across the right side of one face. The stone is likely therefore to be of the coarse local limestone.
- Object type
- stele
- Object condition
- damaged
- Dimensions
- height: 41 cm, width: 26 cm, depth: 17 cm
Material
- Description
- limestone
- Type > subtype
- stone.unspecified > unverified
Inscription
- Layout
- Text on two of the faces (A) and (B), although it is unclear from Managanaro's description if these are the front and rear faces, or adjoining faces, and also on the upper surface.
- Text condition
- incomplete
- Technique
- chiselled
- Pigment
- No data
- Lettering
Somewhat irregular and uneven letters, which include broken-bar alpha, Latin S, quadrate E, uncial omega.
- Letter heights
- Line 1-8: 20-30mm
- Interlinear heights
- Interlineation line 1 to 2: mm
Provenance
- Place of origin
- Canicattini Bagni medium certainty
- Provenance found
- Manganaro merely says that it probably emerged during ploughing in contrada Bibia (territory of Canicattini Bagni, SA), at some point prior to his publication in 2008. No further details are provided and current location is unknown.
- Map
Current location
- Place
- Canicattini Bagni, Sicilia
- Repository
- Autopsy
- None
Date
Manganaro suggests first half of the fourth century BCE, but given the letter forms involved, and the potential confusion of alphabets, a late antique date seems far more likely (AD 201 - AD 700)- Evidence
- lettering
Text type
commentary
Manganaro suggests that this text might be Messapic, or Oscan, and places it in the context of fourth-century BCE mercenary immigration into Sicily. It is very difficult to follow this intepretation. The reported letters do not align well with the Messapic alphabet, and indeed the various letter forms, which appear to include uncial omega and broken-bar alpha, the presence of crosses at the beginning and end of each of the texts, and the apparent interference of the Latin alphabet (S and F) are far more readily explicable in the context of late antique texts, and a late antique boundary stone or similar would seem a much more likely intepretation, even though as things stand, and without the possibility of checking the stone directly (current whereabouts unknown), further progress seems very difficult.
Bibliography
- Digital editions
- TM: 645588
- EDR: -
- EDH: -
- EDCS: -
- PHI: -
- Printed editions
Citation and editorial status
- Editor
- Jonathan Prag
- Principal contributor
- Jonathan Prag
- Contributors
- Last revision
- 5/14/2026