Gardens of the Roman Empire

Funerary Chamber of Manlia Felicitas

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Location

Sublocation

Via Appia

Sublocation Description

An early Roman road (via publica) originating at Rome and terminating at Brundisium, the Via Appia was begun in the fourth century B.C. by the censor Appius Claudius Caecus. The Latin author Statius described the Via Appia as "queen of the long roads".

Garden

Funerary Chamber of Manlia Felicitas

Keywords

Garden Description

In 1937 a French student, Louis Vignon, searching for new catacombs around the third mile of the Via Appia near the tomb of Caecilia Metella, discovered a subterranean funerary chamber accessible via a descending stair that ended at a landing which opened perpendicularly into the middle of one of its walls. Each of the other three walls contained an arcosolium decorated with frescoes depicting animal and vegetal life against a background of herbs and flowers beneath hanging garlands punctuated by aquatic fowl, doves, and the heads of youths; beneath the frescoes the lower walls were paneled in polychrome marble. The figured scenes—at the back, opposite the entrance, a pair of peacocks flanking a niche; to the left a pair of Cupids draping a gazelle in a long ribbon; to the right a pair of gazelles on either side of a twisted tree—belong to a stock of Hellenistic motifs evocative of the gardens of the blessed popular at Rome during the Julio-Claudian period and, especially, the reign of Augustus, to which Wuillemier thought the monument belonged.

When Vignon returned to the site thirteen years later, the underground chamber could not be located, but at the edge of the site, near an ancient aedicula fronting the Via Appia, he found a marble funerary inscription in a pile of broken stones evidently recovered from a second subterranean room beneath the aedicula. Underground galleries extending off the subterranean room and from the intersection at the entrance to the tomb chamber seemed to Vignon to join the two structures to each other in a large subterranean complex (Fig. XXX). The inscription (AE 1952, 35)—an epitaph to a freedwoman Manlia Felicitas set up by her fellow freedman and husband of thirty-five years, P. Manlius Epigonus, her daughter Manlia Flora, and her daughter's husband L. Calpurnius Servatus—declares that the "twenty-fourth part" (pars semunciaria) (either of the entire estate or of an acre, about 40 meters square) "in these gardens of the Manlii" (in his hortis Manlianis) entrusted by Manlia Salvilla (evidently the patroness of Epigonus and Felicitas) to Epigonus for him to hand over to Felicitas, Felicitas had wanted to belong to their daughter Flora. It is uncertain whether "these Manlian gardens" refer to a tomb garden proper or to a suburban estate (horti): both are well attested in conjunction with suburban tombs (see vol. 1, 208). Reference to a "twenty-fourth part", the (indirect) involvement of the patroness Salvilla, and the early imperial fashion of styling suburban estates as "gardens" named after their owners (regularly expressed in adjectival form) here favor the latter. Whether the inscription, which in form and formula appears not later than the second century, can be put into any direct relation with the subterranean chamber with arcosoli, a tomb type more characteristic of the fourth century, remains doubtful. But the discovery of both on the same property perhaps suggests a continuous use of the site as a funerary space for two centuries.

Dates

130CE

Bibliography

J. Bodel, Roman Tomb Gardens, Cambridge University Press, 2018, p. 208-209. link
P. Wuilleumier , Sur la Voie Appienne: Les horti Manliani, Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres,1951, 34-41; Archaiologike Ephemeris, 1952, 35; Quilici 1977: 39 (horti Manliani) worldcat
G.-L. Gregori , Horti sepulchrales e cepotaphia nelle iscrizioni urbane, Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma BCom 92 (1987-88) [1989]: 180 n. 35, 185. worldcat

Places

Funerary Chamber of Manlia Felicitas Pleiades: 990721366

Tomb Garden of Aur(elius) Inachus

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Location

Sublocation

Via Appia

Sublocation Description

Garden

Tomb Garden of Aur(elius) Inachus

Keywords

tombs AAT:300005926

Garden Description

An inscription found beside the Via Appia near the tomb of Cecelia Metella in 1851 identifies a cepotaphium belonging to Aur(elius) Inachus, a freedman of one of the Antonine emperors (probably Commodus), who served as assistant to the messengers at the office of the emperor's private accounts, and to Aurelia Macariane, Aurelia Rodogune, and their freedmen and freedwomen and descendants (CIL 6.8505 cf. p. 3459). The womens' names are unusual: "R(h)odogune" is recorded only once elsewhere at Rome; "Macariane" (the not uncommon "Macaria" plus a suffix modeled on "Rodogune"?) appears to be otherwise unattested. The absence of a praenomen from Inachus's name and the abbreviation of his gentilicium point to a date in the first half of the third century.

Dates

Unspecified

Bibliography

J. Bodel, Roman Tomb Gardens, Cambridge University Press, 2018, p. 236. link
G.-L. Gregori , SHorti sepulchrales e cepotaphia nelle iscrizioni urbane, Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma" worldcat

Places

Tomb Garden of Aur(elius) Inachus Pleiades: 811119037

Tomb Garden of Claudia Semne

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Location

Sublocation

Via Appia

Sublocation Description

Garden

Tomb Garden of Claudia Semne

Keywords

Garden Description

Four inscriptions unearthed in 1792 between the second and third mile of the Via Appia near S. Sebastiano identify the tomb garden complex of Claudia Semne, wife of M. Ulpius Crotonensis, a freedman of the emperor Trajan (CIL 6.15592-155495; ILS 8063c). According to the principal text (CIL 6.15593), the rectangular tomb monument (c. 3.1 x 3.8 m.) was surrounded by an enclosed garden (hortus) in which were "pavilions (tricliae), a little vineyard (viniola), a well (puteum), and shrines (aediculae) in which statues of Claudia in the likeness of the gods (in formam deorum)" were housed. Within the tomb were two inscribed funerary altars, one dedicated to Fortuna, Spes, Venus, and the memory of Claudia Semne (CIL 6.15594), the other to the couple's freeborn son (CIL 6.15595), who died at the age of eighteen; and, probably, a statuette of Claudia Semne with the attributes of Spes and three busts of Semne and her son, which were found nearby. The tomb itself was richly decorated by Crotonensis with reliefs and portrait statuary associating wife and son with their divine counterparts, Venus and a young hunter (perhaps Meleager or Adonis). A pair of statuettes of the son wearing a toga and holding a book roll and box probably flanked the entrance to the tomb. In this paradeigmatic context of private deification, the garden was perhaps meant to evoke a Hellenistic funerary paradeisos and its associations with the divine afterlife, but pavilions, wells, and vineyards were standard appurtenances of the Roman funerary garden as well. The style of the sculptural decoration points to a date around 130 CE.

Dates

Unspecified

Bibliography

Bignamini, Ilaria, and Amanda Claridge， The Tomb of Claudia Semne and Excavations in Eighteenth-Century Rome. Papers of the British School at Rome 66 (1998): 215-44. Accessed December 1, 2020. link
G.-L. Gregori , SHorti sepulchrales e cepotaphia nelle iscrizioni urbane, Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma" worldcat
H. Wrede,Das Mausoleum des Claudia Semne und die bürgerliche Plastik der Kaiserzeit,MDAI(R) 78 (1971): 125-66;worldcat
J. Bodel, Roman Tomb Gardens, Cambridge University Press, 2018, p. 208-209. link

Places

Tomb Garden of Claudia Semne Pleiades: 537932155