Tomb Garden of Ti. Claudios Lykos

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

Location

Garden

Keywords

Garden Description

A limestone sarcophagus found at Thessaloniki and first reported in 1962 preserves an epitaph set up in 147 A.D. by Ti. Claudios Lykos, a local town counselor (bouleutÆw), for himself, his loving wife Meinoukia (Minucia) Theoprepes, and his two daughters Roda and Theoprepes. As Robert correctly observed (Bull. Épigr. 1963:134), the garbled inscription—a product, it seems, of two drafts of the text being confused by the carver—nonetheless makes clear that Lykos had built a tomb garden complex, which he calls a ≤r"on, comprising "a field, house, garden, and, burial place" (égrÒw, oﬁk€a, k∞pow, tÒpow), in which were situated various sarcophagi (lhnÒi) and statues (éndriãntew) and which he attempted to prevent from future alienation. Two other inscriptions found in the same complex identify Lykos as granting, in one case, a cinerary urn (kaÊstra), in the other, in 167 A.D., a burial place (tÒpow) to others for their monuments. A secondary inscription on the cover of Lykos's sarcophagus attests its reuse later in the third century. Robert and Kubińska considered the "house" (oﬁk€a) to be that of a gardener appointed to oversee the garden complex, but the traditional formulaic pairing of field and house, garden and tomb attested elsewhere (at the tomb gardens of C. Hostius Pamphilus at Rome [cross-ref, XXX] and of C. [Ma?]rcius C. l. Cleon at Bari [cross-ref XXX]) suggests that it is Lykos's own house that is meant and, perhaps, that the tomb garden is located on its property. For the conventional "tomb" (tãfow, sepulchrum, monumentum) Lykos substitutes "burial place" (tÒpow, Latin locus, as in l(ocus) d(atus) d(ecreto) d(ecurionum), a formula for awarding honorific burials with which Lykos the decurion was assuredly familiar), but his conformity to the traditional conceptual juxtapositions is apparent. To judge from the presence of statues and more than one sarcophagus, and from the granting of burial space to others, Lykos's funerary garden was a substantial complex.

Maps

Dates

147 CE, 167 CE

Bibliography

: IG X 2,1.608; J. Kubińska, Les monuments funéraires dans les inscriptions grecques de l'Asie Mineure. Warsaw, 1968, p. 146; P. Petsas, "AgrÒw, oﬁk€a, k∞pow, tÒpow," in J. H. Dell, ed. Macedonian Studies in Honor of Charles F. Edson. Thessaloniki, 1981, pp. 295-98; Bull. Épigr. 1963, 134; 1984, 252.

Gardens of the Roman Empire

Tomb Garden of Ti. Claudios Lykos

Location

Garden

Keywords

Garden Description

Maps

Dates

Bibliography

Places