DRAFT

Tomb Garden of Claudia Semne

Author: John Bodel
Contributor: Yuyao Liu
Published: 2021-04-21
Modified: 2025-06-29

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

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

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