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Greetings,
very nice, wish I could find something like that....
Looking at the inscription - they say L Nisus - it was originally thought to be Insus....and to me it looks like Iaisus... or L Aisus:?
Regards
Arthes
Cristina
The Hoplite Association
[url:n2diviuq]http://www.hoplites.org[/url]
The enemy is less likely to get wind of an advance of cavalry, if the orders for march were passed from mouth to mouth rather than announced by voice of herald, or public notice. Xenophon
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Hi,
Looking at the inscription on the photograph, I'm not sure if L. Nisus Vodullius is the correct name. First of all, it would mean that the N and I would have been placed in a ligature. That would be the only ligature in the whole text. That is hard to believe, because in the rest of the text (almost) all words are written out fully. Besides that the N in the name looks exactly the same as the N in MANIBUS, which isn't in a ligature with the I.
L. for Lucius is doubtfull as well to me. If you look at it carefully this letter is cut out exactly the same way as the I in MANIBUS. So to me the name would be INSUS. If it is the abbreviation for Lucius than we would have the tria nomina. This hints clearly to Roman citizenship, but this would be uncommon (but not entirely impossible) for a soldier (eques) in a non-citizen troop-type like an ala.
And what about VODULLIUS? Isn't it strange that there seems to be seven letters on the first full line of the inscription (so VODULLI) , which would mean that the last two letters are on the second full line. But at that area the stone is damaged and clearly some letters are missing like the M is missing for MANIBUS in the first line. So to me Vodullius isn't really an option for a solution.
Like stated before, to me this man is not a Roman citizen but a peregrinus. He even states that he's a member of the civitas Treverorum. So a 'normal' peregrinus-type name should be expected, i.e. name + patronymicon. On the second line, we can still see a hint of the letter I (before VS). Knowing that some letters are still missing from the beginning of that line, my guess is that these could be FIL. This gives us the following name: INSUS VODULLI FILIUS.
But this is a mere hypothesis.
I can only look at a picture, not the real thing; the space for FIL seems to be very short (but not that impossible to fit it in); and I haven't got any access no more to a scientific library to check the onomastic reference-books.
Just my thoughts though.
Hans
Flandria me genuit, tenet nunc Roma
