Notes on Exuperantia

In the last line of the previous inscription, the letters "P.M." appear.  I'm not familiar with what this abbreviation means, exactly.  The German in the book in which this appears seems to translate this as "ungefahr", which, as far as I can figure out, means "not dangerously", so I translated it as "safely".

Anyone out there knowledge on German, or what the "P.M." might actually stand for?

Exuperantia

† EXVPERANTIA D. XV. KL. SEPT.

HIC DEPOSITA EST IN PACE ROME, QVAE

BIXIT P. M. MENSES III.

† Exuperantia Dies XV. Kalendas Septembris

Hic Depostia Est In Pace Romae, Quae

vixit P. M. Menses III.

Exuperantia was buried here at Rome in peace

on the 15th day of the Kalends of September.

She lived safely for 3 months.

(p. 34)

Januarius

IANVARIO DIGNO FILIO

PARENTES FECERVNT,

QVI VIXIT ANNIS VI

QVIESCIT IN PACE AETERNA

Ianuario digno filio

parentes fecerunt,

qui vixit annis VI

quiescit in aeterna

For Januarius, their worthy son,

his parents made (this monument),

who lived for six years.

He rests in everlasting  peace.

(p.245)

What is a neophyte?

Neophyte (neophytoi, the newly planted, i.e. incorporated with the mystic Body of Christ), a term applied in theology to all those who have lately entered upon a new and higher state or condition of life, e.g. those who have begun the ecclesiastical life, or have joined a religious order. More particularly is it used of those who, lately converted from heathenism, have by the sacrament of Baptism, been transplanted into the higher life of the Church.

From The Catholic Encyclopedia.

Flavia Jovina

FL. IOVINA , QVAE VIXIT

ANNIS TRIBUS D. XXXII DEPOS

NEOFITA IN PACE XI CAL. OCTOB.

Flavia Jovina, quae vixit

annis tribus dies XXXII depos(ita)

neofita in pace XI Cal. Octob.

Flavia Jovina, who lived

three years 32 days, buried

a neophyte in peace the 11th of the Kalends of October.

(p. 290)

The original St. Peter's Basilica

Most people are probably not aware of the fact that the present St. Peter's is not the original church, but was built on the site of a church which was planned and begun by Constantine in 330 AD and which stood for almost 1200 years until the present basilica was built from 1506 to 1626.

At left is a drawing of the nave of Old St. Peter's.  The nave was 340 feet long, and had two aisles on either side, much like the Mission San Juan Bautista.  For comparison, the current St. Peter's is 730 feet long.

Here is the outer facade of Old St. Peter's.  Its asymmetrical design is only one of the things that appear odd to us who are used to Bramante, Michaelangleo, and Bernini's designs.  There was also a large colonnaded atrium between the outer and inner facades.

At left is the inner facade, which one would face after entering through the outer facade pictured above.


Finally, below is a diagram showing the original location of Nero's Circus (green), the location of Old St. Peter's (brown), and the current Basilica with buildings of the present (gray).  The reason why the basilicas are slightly offset from where the circus was, and where St. Peter was crucified, is explained in GREAT detail at saintpetersbasilica.org

There is a wealth of material available about the original site of St. Peter's death, how early Christians kept the relics of the Apostle during the first 3 centuries, and how the site was treated and eventually selected and prepared for the construction of the basilica after the accession of Constantine as Emperor and his proclamation of Christianity as the Empire's official religion.

The length of a life

Many of the inscriptions in the catacombs and cemetaries of the first Christians in Rome relate the exact number of years, months, and days which a person lived, and many of them also specifiy the day on which they died, but none mention the person's birthday.  Clearly they knew they knew the 'real' birthday, but they simply do not mention it.  However, the inscriptions do frequently speak of the day on which they died as the day on which they were "born in peace", or something similar.

Severius

SEVERIO FILIO DVL

CISSIMO LAURENTIVS PATER

BENEMERENTI QVI BI

XIT ANN. IIII ME VIII DIES V

ACCERSITVS AB ANGELIS VII IDVS IANVA.

Severio Filio Dulcissimo

Laurentius Pater

Benemerenti qui vixit

Annos IIII Menses VIII Dies V

Accersitus ab angelis VII Idus Ianua.

For Severius, most sweet

and well deserving son, from

your father Laurentius.

You lived four years, eight months, 5 days.

Summoned by angels on the seventh of the Ides of January

(p. 156)

A Consular Anecdote

In 59 BC Julius Caesar and Marcus Bibulus were elected consuls.  Caesar tried to bring forward legislation that would redistribute lands to the poor, and when the opponents of the measure objected, Pompey (who was part of the informal Triumvirate with Caesar and Crassus which actually made the decisions) filled the streets of Rome with his soldiers.  Bibulus tried to block the measure, but he was physcially assaulted and withdrew to his house for the rest of the year, proclaiming the legislation void because of bad omens.  Wags referred to the year as that of "the consulship of Julius and Caesar".

Consuls and Years

How did the Romans keep track of years?   Formally, they dated events ab urbe condita, from the founding of the city, which was traditionally 753 BC.  But in practical terms, people generally referred to the year by the two consuls for that year: "during the consulship of Scipio and Crassus", for example.  Roman magistrates were elected to one year terms, and although it was not unheard of for a man to be elected to the same post, it very seldom happened, so it was easy for people to refer to the year by the names of the consuls.  The closest modern analogy is probably when we refer to something that happened "during the Reagan administration", or on a personal level, "that was the year we got married". 

Consuls were the chief executives of the Roman Republic.  There were two of them because the Romans hated autocrats, and did not want absolute power in the hands of one man: history proved that they were right to do so. Many postitions in the Roman state (governors of provinces or commanders of armies, for example) were only filled by ex-consuls (or ex-praetors, who were one step below the consuls in the hierarchy of Roman magistrates).   Even during the Empire the consulships were still filled annually, because the bureaucracy of the Roman state required officials to run it.

This particular inscription can be dated to the year 291 AD because we have lists of all the consuls for each year of the Republic and the Empire from 509 BC up until the middle of the 6th century AD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_Consuls

Cervonia Silvana

EX VIRGINIO TVO BEN

E MECO VIXISTI LIBENI C

ONIVGA INNOCENTISSI

MA CERVONIA SILVANA

REFRIGERA CVM SPIRITA

SANCTA DEP KAL APR. TIBERI

ANO II ET DIONI COSS.

Ex virginio tuo bene

mecum vixisti libeni

coniuga innocentissima

Cervonia Silvana

refrigera cum Spirita

Sancta dep Kal Apr.

Tiberiano II et Dioni Coss.

From your girlhood you

lived a good life willingly with me, my most innocent

wife Cervonia Silvana!

May you find refreshment with the Holy

Spirit!  Buried on the Kalends of April

in the Consulship of Tiberianus (his second)

and Dio.

(p. 259)

Roman months

I hinted yesterday about the names of the months and their relation to their place in the calendar.  The Roman calendar originally began with the month of March, so the months of September, October, November, and December all betray their origin in their name (Septem=Seven, Octo=Eight, Novem=Nine, and Decem=Ten).  Also, before the Empire, the names for July and August were Quintilis (Quinque=Five) and Sextilis (Sex=Six).  They were renamed for the first two Roman emperors, Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar.

Another indication that the year used to begin in March is that the month for adding extra days to keep the calendar in line with the sun, and which to this day we use to add a day for leap year, is the month at the 'end' of the calendar: February. (The Romans, prior to Julius Caesar's reform of the calendar, used to add a month at a time in the middle of February to keep the clanedar and the sun in synch).

The Roman Calendar

The 'Mercurius' inscription refers to the Ides of February. Most of us have heard of the Ides of March from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", when the seer tells Caesar to beware the Ides of March.  But what were the Ides? and how did the Romans tell what day it was?

First off, we inherited our months from the the Romans, so the names of the months are the same as theirs, even down to the clue that the first month of the year was not January (Septem, Octo, Novem, Decem). The Romans did not use weeks, however, but referred to three days in each month by name:  the Ides, the Nones, and the Kalends.  The Kalends (from which we get 'calendar') was the first day of the month; the Nones was the 7th, and the Ides the 13th.  Ah ha!, you say, but the Ides of March is March 15th!  That's true; for March, May, July, and October, the Nones fell on the 9th and the Ides on the 15th.  These three days were used for market days, interest calculations, and legal proceedings.

The strangest thing about the Roman calendar to modern eyes, though, is how they counted the days.  We count forward from the first day of the month; e.g., the 2nd of December, the 25th of May, etc.  The Romans counted forward to the next named day of the calendar. So , for example, since May 10th is six days before May 15th (counting both the beginning and ending date, which they did), them May 10th was known as the 6th day before the Ides of May.  Today, November 16 in modern reckoning, is the 16th day before the Kalends of December.

This calendar had developed in the very first days under the Etruscans, when Rome was still a country village, and so the reason for counting like this was that, as an agrarian society, they had no need to know how many days had passed since the last market day;  they did, however, have a vital interest in knowing when they had to get their produce to the forum for the next market day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar

Mercurius

PARENTES FILIO MERCVRIO

FECERVNT QVI VIXIT ANN.

V. ET MESES VIII. NATVS IN

PACE IDVS FEBRV.

Parentes filio Mercurio

fecerunt qui vixit ann.

V et menses VIII. Natus in

pace Idus Febru.

The parents made this (monument) for

their son Mercurius, who lived for

5 years and 8 months.  He was born into

peace on the Ides of February. (Feb. 13)

(p. 250)

Ichthys

In my previous post, I typed the final word of the inscription as "IXQYS".  This represents the Greek word for "fish", which is transliterated as "ichthys", and was used by early Christians as a code word (and symbol) to identify each other.

Because the blogging software does not allow me to use characters of the Greek alphabet, I substituted the letter Q for the Greek letter Theta, which looks somewhat similar.  (BTW, if anyone knows how I might get around this restriction, please let me know).

Here is a scanned document which shows the Greek text of the word, and what each letter represents:

So the inscription for Caecilia Placida could have been a regular funerary inscription, except for the inclusion of the final word.

Caecilia Placida

CECILIUS.MARITVS.CECILIAE

PLACIDAE.COIVGI.OPTIMAE

MEMORIAE.CVM.QVA.VIXI.ANNIS.X.

BENE.SENE.ULLA.QVERELLA. IXQYS.

Caecilius maritus Caeciliae

Placidae coniugi optimae

memoriae cum qua vixi annis X

bene sine ulla querella.  IXQYS

Caecilius, husband, to the memory

of his best wife, Caecilia Placida,

with whom I lived well for 10 years

without any complaint.  ICHTYS

(p. 343)

Spelling and language change

The previous entry, although very short, is rich with examples of how spelling can show us pronunciation from a vantage of almost 2000 years.

Agape:  This is the Latin transliteration of a Greek word which means 'love'.  This is probably a name, although it could also be an affectionate term of endearment.  The spelling shows us that the Greek letter Eta was pronounced like the Latin letter 'e'.

vibes:  in 'correct' Latin, this would be 'vives', the second person singular of the future indicative ("you will live").  The alternation of 'v' and 'b' here shows that, even in the first two centuries AD, the trend of pronouncing these letters as they are in Spanish today was already current.  We will see many more examples of this, and explore it further.

eternum:  usually spelled 'aeternum', this shows us another trend.  Historically, the 'ae' diphthong was originally spelled 'ai' and was pronounced as the English word 'eye'.  One of our oldest existing records of written Latin is a bronze tablet from the year 186 BC, which records a decree of the Roman Senate concerning the 'Bacchanalia'  ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senatus_consultum_de_Bacchanalibus ).  This decree changes from 'ai' to 'ae' in the same phrase ('apud aedem Bellonai').   Later, the pronunciation of 'ae' softened from 'eye' to English 'ay' as in 'hooray'.  Since this was roughly the same as the pronunciation of the Latin long 'e', we see that, as in this inscription, the spelling reflected that 'confusion'.

Agape

AGAPE, VIBES IN ETERNUM

Agape, you will live forever

(p. 280)

As I look at the posts I've made thus far, I realize they've been almost completely historical and linguistic. That's fine, but I don't want to lose sight of the fact that these inscriptions, which are overwhemlingly taken from the catacombs and cemetaries of Rome before Constantine, testify to the faith of people who expereinced something that, God willing, we never will: imprisonment, torture, and death for acknowledging our faith.  They had no idea how long the persecutions would last - they might have gone on forever - but these our ancestors kept their families in the Faith, and besides the Church and our Traditions, these monuments and inscriptions are tangible evidence of that.

And to add one linguistic note, the word 'marytr' comes from a Greek word which means 'to testify to'; 'to bear witness to'.  It's an ordinary legal term which was appropriated to dignify what the Martyrs were doing with their very lives.

Spelling 'vixit'

I mentioned the fluidity of spelling and pronunciation yesterday reagarding 'sebete'.  In my very first post (Hic requiescit..), the normal word for "she lived", "Vixit", is spelled "viscit".

There are several possible reasons for this, but the first thing to be aware of is that 'x' is a double consonant.  Even in English, it's a combination of 'k' and 's', so the Romans could, and did, sometimes spell 'vixit' as 'vicsit'. The first possible explanation for 'viscit', then, is simple error:  the person making the inscription transposed the 'c' and the 's'.  Much the same thing happens today when native speakers of English say "I want to aks you a question", or when they refer to the 'little star' as an 'asteriks'.

Another possiblilty is that the pronunciation of the 'x' in 'vixit' had started to change.  We will soon see that the 'v' is spelled as both 'v' and 'b' in inscriptions (sometimes both in the same inscription).  So perhaps the 'ks' sound is already starting to morph into its Spanish, French, and Italian descendants.

Alexamenos worships God

This graffito was discovered in 1857 during excavations of the Palatine Hill. It has become justly famous as one of the earliest depictions (and caricatures) of a Christian worshipping Christ crucified.  For details, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito

The Greek text printed above has caused some discussion, with some scholars debating how the imperative plural (sebete) could be used for the third person singular indicative (sebetai).  D'oh!!  I can think of two off the top of my head:  spelling and pronunciation were fluid (as we will see in further inscriptions to come);  whoever did this was mocking Christians, so he might have been mocking their language skills at the same time.

In more familiar text....

the previous inscription would appear thus

Anatolius filio bene merenti fecit
qui vixit annis VI mensis VII diebus XXI.
Spiritus tuus bene requiescat in Deo.
Petas pro sorore tua.

Anatolius for his son

ANATOLIVS FILIO BENEMERENTI FECIT

QVI VIXIT ANNIS VI MENSIS VII DIEBVS

XXI. SPIRITVS TVVS BENE REQVIES

CAT IN DEO. PETAS PRO SORORE TVA.

Anatolius made this (monument) for his well-deserving son

who lived for 6 years 7 months 21 days.

May your spirit rest well in God.

Pray for your sister.

Latin notes

First of all, the most obvious thing that someone with knowledge of Latin will notice is that all the instances of the letter "u" are written as "V".  That's because there was only one letter that filled both the niche of a consonant sounding like "w" and as a vowel sounding like our modern vowel "u" (pronounced "oo" as in "moon").  The consonantal "u" later changed to the sound of our English "v", but during the Classical Period of Latin, "Veni, vidi, vici" was pronounced "waynee, weedy, wicky".  So "V" was used to write both letters, especially in inscriptions, for many centuries after the Birth of Christ.

Some Linguistic Notes

After posting an inscription and its translation, I will add some notes regarding the language of the inscription.  There are many Latin, Greek, and mixed language inscriptions, and because many of these were written by people who were not the best educated of the time, idiosyncrasies creep in.  Also, those who study the classical languages today focus on the literature which has come down to us, and is normally used as an exemplar of grammar and style.  Many of these early Christians may never have heard of, much less read, the Orations of Cicero.  They wrote as they spoke, and that in itself is an invaluable piece of evidence.

Hic Requiescit.......

The name of the blog is taken from an inscription which reads:

HIC REQVIESCIT IN SOPNO PACIS
AGEL PERGA ANCILLA CHRISTI
QUAE VISCIT AN.PL. M. XVIII
CREDO DEVM PATREM
CREDO DEVM FILIVM
CREDO DM SPIRITUM
SANTV CREDO Q. NOBISSIMO
DIE RESVRGAM.

Here rests in the sleep of peace
Agel Perga, Servant of Christ
Who lived almost 18 years
I believe in God the Father
I believe in God the Son
I believe in God the Holy Spirit
I believe that I will rise again
on the latest day.