Tomb Garden of Attia Quintilla
Location
Sublocation
Sublocation Description
Garden
Tomb Garden of Attia Quintilla
Keywords
Garden Description
A handsome marble funerary altar of unknown but presumably urban provenance, now in the Louvre, decorated on the front with Erotes holding garlands and on the sides with storks and other birds records the epitaph of Attia T. f. Quintilla set up by her father, Attius Phlegon, her mother Attia Quinta (probably both ex-slaves), and her brother Attius T. f. Quintianus. Along with the monument, which can be dated to the first or early second century, Quintilla's parents and brother also dedicated to her and to their descendants and the freedmen and freedwomen of their household "a field or garden (agrum sive hortum) with a building, enclosed by a wall".The building, a substantial structure of some thirteen rooms, seems to comprise, on the ground floor, a series of three work rooms opening off a central corridor that leads directly through the house from front to back, a two-room suite separately accessible from the front porch (perhaps the residence of the gardner and overseer of the tomb), and a stairway to the upper floor. The upper floor presents a more seigneural aspect: in addition to two large rooms and a pair of small functional rooms corresponding to those on the first floor, the residential space includes a narrow rectangular room or balcony over the entranceway and a two-room suite and a separate room built out above the rear service court and overlooking the garden. A broad passageway eleven feet wide along the side of the building seems to allow for a wagon to be backed into position for loading directly from the garden. The dimensions of the rooms inscribed along most of the interior walls indicate that the three building plans are not drawn to the same scale, and it is not clear how the two structures were situated in relation to each other. The configuration of the aedificium and garden suggests the arrangements of a working kitchen garden with related workspaces on the ground floor and a residential and dining area on the upper floor, perhaps for the use of family members celebrating communal meals at the tomb site during the annual Parentalia and other festivals of the dead. The cepotaphium dedicated by C. Cominius Abascantus at Puteoli in 148 CE provided for the town magistrates and officers of the Augustales to dine annually at the site in a dining room above his tomb (no. XXX).
Dates
Unspecified
Bibliography
- W. Altmann, Die römischen Grabaltäre der Kaiserzeit, (Berlin 1905) 168 no. 214; S. worldcat
- S. Ducroix, Catalogue analytique des inscriptions latines sur pierre conservées au Musée du Louvre, (Paris 1975) 96 no. 314. worldcat
- D. Boschung, Antike Grabaltäre aus den Nekropolen Roms, (Acta Bernensia X) (Bern 1987) 107 no. 329, Taf. worldcat
- G.-L. Gregori, Horti sepulchrales e cepotaphia nelle iscrizioni urbane, BCom 92 (1987-88) [1989] 177 n. 9. worldcat