Funerary altar of Iulia Victorina 1st C. CE

May 11, 2022

Funerary altar of Iulia Victorina 1st C. CE

"Funerary altar of Iulia Victorina. Marble. Last quarter of the 1st century CE. The altar is dedicated to the en:manes of Iulia Victorina dead at 10 years and 5 months old. Purchase 1863. Louvre museum (Paris, France). Portrait on the front of the 10 year old girl at her death, garlanded in a floral frame, and on the back as the young matrona she would never become. Trees on each (side).

While Julia Victorina is only one child in the unhappy statistic that half of all Roman children died by the age of ten, her death in the last quarter of the 1st century CE is personalized by the unique and costly monument her parents set up in her memory. With this elegant altar, now in the Louvre Museum in Paris, Gaius Julius Saturninus and Lucilia Procula, who are otherwise unknown by rank, ancestry, or situation, memorialized their grief and hopes for a young daughter taken from them prematurely. The monument would have been placed in a family tomb and held a cinerary urn containing the child's ashes. It is a rectangular block of white marble, elaborately carved on all four sides and crowned by a marble cover gracefully decorated with motifs (mouldings, volutes, and blossoms) that echo those carved on the front and back of the lower stone. The front of the altar bears the dedicatory inscription and features a portrait bust in high relief of the lovely face of a girl, framed by a wide border of acanthus leaves and variegated flowers, symbols in the Mediterranean world of eternal life. Julia Victorina, gazing pensively off to her right, wears ball-shaped pendent earrings, probably of gold; her shoulders are draped, her hair is styled almost boyishly and is crowned by a crescent moon, at once a symbol of eternity and association with Diana in her role as the moon-Goddess. On the back of the altar she appears again, similarly framed with botanicals, but now as a young matrona, as her parents had hoped in a few years to enjoy her; her face is solemn and thinner but recognizable as the child she was. She looks directly at the viewer, wearing the married woman's stola, a palla draped over one shoulder and the same pendent earrings; her hair is arranged in a more matronly style, topped by a radiate crown that symbolizes her apotheosis in the heavens and her immortality. The short sides of the altar are decorated with a flourishing laurel tree, an evergreen sacred to Apollo, God of the sun; within its branches hover two birds, possibly ravens, his sacred bird, seen here together with laurel-crowned Apollo in his shrine. This extraordinary altar, with its portrait busts and floral designs promising immortality, offers moving testimony to the grief of Victorina's parents over the loss of a beloved child.

The dedicatory inscription is crowded into the space below the child’s bust, which awkwardly divides the girl's cognomen. The words are written in square capitals over five lines of diminishing size, with prominence given to the Di Manes and the girl's name. The letters are well formed and centered, with medial dots (interpuncts) separating the words in lines 3-6.

Latin:

D[is] M[anibus]

IVLIAE VIC TORINAE

QVAE• VIX[it]• ANN[is] • X• MENS[ibus]• V•

C[aius]• IVLIVS• SATVRNINVS• ET

LVCILIA• PROCVLA• PARENTES

FILIAE• DVLCISSIMAE• FECERVNT

English:

To the spirits of the dead

Julia Victorina

Who lived for ten years and five months

Gaius Julius Saturninus and

Lucilia Procula

Parents of this sweetest daughter

Had this monument made

Notes to Funerary Inscription for Victorina:

Di Manes, m. pl.
    the collective spirits of the dead, the divine spirits. DM is a common abbreviation for the dedication of a funerary monument to the spirits of the dead and thus is in the dative case. These letters or the words they stand for are regularly found at the head of funerary inscriptions dating from the end of the 1st century BCE through the 2nd century CE.

Iulia, -ae f.
    Julia is the proper name of women born into the gens Iulia. Victorina appears to have inherited the nomen gentilicium from her father. The name of the deceased is either in the dative case as the dedicatee of the inscription, or the genitive as the possessor of the DM.

Victorina, -ae f.
    The dead girl's cognomen.

menses, menses m.
    month. Both annis and mensibus are ablatives of time following vixit. Some inscriptions included days as well.

Saturninus, -i m.
    The cognomen of Victorina's father is found during the Republic and the Empire. There was a centurian named Gaius Iulius Saturninus who came from Chios and served under the Flavians in a unit of Spaniards in Egypt, but no firm connection can be made.

Lucilia, -ae f.
    Lucilia is the proper name of women born into the gens Lucilia; Victorina's mother's cognomen is Procula.

parens, -entis m./f.
    parent. It is in the nominative plural, in apposition with Saturninus and Procula, who are the subjects of the verb fecerunt.

dulcis, -e
    sweet, lovely, dear, kind. The adjective is in the superlative degree. It modifies filiae; both are in the dative case, in apposition with Iuliae Victorinae.

[hoc monumentum]
    this phrase normally follows the verb of dedication (fecit/fecerunt) in funerary inscriptions. Monumentum is the regular word for a Roman tombstone. Sometimes the entire formula is omitted as unnecessary or for lack of space or money."