Researchers from the University of Granada (UGR) have documented for the first time in the world a new proper name from Roman times, Subulcus, in an inscription on a funerary stele found in 2020 by chance in the Granada municipality of Domingo Pérez.
This term appears in the famous ‘Etymologies of Isidoro of Seville’, where it indicates that it refers to a “pig shepherd”, that is, a swineherd, but to date there was no evidence that it was also used as a proper name.
The next issue of the prestigious journal Epigraphica, published by the University of Sassari (Italy), includes the study carried out by professors from the Department of Ancient History at the UGR Ángel Padilla Arroba and Eva Morales Rodríguez on this Roman inscription.
The discovery of the funerary stele occurred in 2020 and the authors have carried out a complete study of the piece, which is deposited in the Granada Archaeological Museum, where it is currently in the process of being restored.
It dates from the late 1st century and the 2nd century AD.
The inscription is a well-made limestone funerary stele, with a polished surface, rectangular in shape, and a gently rounded top. It does not present any type of ornamental motif and the back and side faces only show signs of cutting the stone. It has dimensions of 64’8 x 40 x 17 and the text is distributed along 12 lines, 11 of which are preserved in good condition, and 1, the last one, only shows the apex of what the two could have been. first letters of it. The authors, due to the font used and the funerary formulas represented, date it between the end of the 1st century and the 2nd century AD.
The inscription lists the names of 6 people, freed from status, with family ties between some of them, in which only their name and the age at which they died are mentioned. In the Roman world, freedmen were former slaves who had been freed from their servitude and had become free citizens, but still did not have the same status or rights as a naive, that is, someone who had never fallen into slavery, and they would be considered forever as former slaves.
The tombstone found in Domingo Pérez must have been placed in a funerary monument of certain dimensions, which was probably specified in the last line, which has been lost. Of the 6 individuals that appear in it, 3 are men and 3 women. The three men and one of the women belong to the Pomponia gens, a family of commoner origin, whose presence in the south of the peninsula is not attested until relatively late.
“Among the names that are collected on the stela, one stands out especially, Quintus Pomponius Subulcus,” Padilla and Morales explain. Its particularity and importance lie in the fact that it is the first documented testimony in the entire Roman world of the term Subulcus forming part of the name day of an individual, who, in this case, died at 55 years of age ».
Said name is not included in any of the major repertoires, nor in the main epigraphic databases, “so it is an exceptional find that enriches the already extensive repertoire of documented Roman names not only in Hispania, but also in the entire Empire”, point out the researchers from the UGR.
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