L'Africa romana - UnissResearch - Università degli Studi di Sassari

122 Fadel Ali Mohamed - Joyce Reynolds
L. l, a name such as ' AXiì"AEuç is lost.
For the Libyan name Aialan see on no. 3; the other names are Greek
and attested in the area, see FRASER/MATTHEWS, cit. on no. 1.
6. Marble panel, damaged on alI edges (width 0.15 x height 0.08 x depth·
0.03) inscribed on one face. Found in a cistern l km east of Cyrene, besi
de the ShahatlDerna road; now in Cyrene Museum. Plate IV
Letters, probably ear1y II cent. AD: passably aligned but very uneven
in height; L for È'trov; superscript bar above the figures.
Fadel Ali and Reynolds, forthcoming in «Libya Antiqua».
5
[?v.] IJ61tAtOç vv.
'QKta!3tOç NiYEP
KaAòç Kelya06ç
MapKcol 'OKta!3ico[l]
vacat
v. ui6ç (Ètrov) 1}ç'
Publius
Octavius Niger
handsome and good
son of Marcus Octavius
aged 26
LI. 1,2, the initial letters, though incomplete, are certain.
L. 5, the first figure is not absolutely certain.
This is the funerary inscription for a young man with the tria nomina
of a Roman citizen, son of a man who was also, no doubt, a Roman
citizen but for whom only praenomen and nomen are given. That is commonly
taken to indicate a date at latest not much after the first three
quarters of the frrst century AD, although a few later instances are known.
For the date of this text there can be no absolute certainty, but the best
parallels for the letter forms seem to us to be in the ear1y II cent. AD,
while it is in the reign ofHadrian (cf. SEG IX. 171, 172) that other examples
of the curious masculine genitive singular in -COl can be easily found
(it is perhaps due to an attempt to assert Cyrene's Doric connections in
an age when the dialect had fallen out of everyday use).
Other Octavii are attested in Cyrene, cf. SEG IX. 241 where the use
of latin as well as greek and the cognomen Camars point to an immigrant
family, possibly from Italy. There, as here, however, there are signs
of greek influence in the nomenc1ature, note here that despite Niger's
Iatin cognomen and the use of ui6ç in 1. 5, his filiation is not quite in
the standard roman style and may seem designed to stress his father's
dviI status in roman terms. Moreover the complimentary description in
1. 3 involves a wholly Greek concept, although not one that normally
features in funerary texts anywhere in the ancient world. The fami1y c1early
wished to display hellenism as well as Roman citizenship, but was perhaps
not wholly familiar with its conventions.