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Minitrae Et Numini Eius. A Celtic Deity and the Vulgar Latin in Aquincum
179-193Views:164The subject of this paper is a curious and somewhat problematic inscription on an altar from Aquincum. Among the many features of this inscription that are interesting for our study, the most striking one is the beginning of the text: the name of the god or goddess is controversial. Who exactly was Minitra? A Celtic goddess, or someone much better known from Roman religious life? According to Géza Alföldy, the native gods of Pannonia were venerated still in the 3rd century A.D., including Teutates, Sedatus, Ciniaemus and Minitra, etc. Since the inscription in question contains many vulgar Latin phenomena, it becomes questionable whether the name of the deity is written correctly, especially because, while the names of classical gods rarely appear misspelled, the names of the gods of so-called ‘eastern’ cults and mystery religions appear in a number of faulty variations. I will try to identify the deity through the analysis of Vulgar Latin phenomena.
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The Magical Fomula on a Lost Uterine Amulet
111–114Views:73The article tries to reconstruct the inscription of a magical gem found in 1883 in Torontál which went lost by now. For this reconstructive work I used other gem inscriptions and also other magical papyri and lead tablets in order to compare the two types of texts. The inscription contains the Soroor-logos and the Gigantorekta barophita-logos as well. The gem and the inscription together were used for the protection of the uterus.
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The inscription of the statue of Divus Commodus in Sopron
83–90Views:82The collection of the Liszt Ferenc Museum Sopron, contains, among other pieces, a fragment of a marble slab. The elegantly cut letters follow the writing style of the Antonine age, with their forms close to those of scriptura monumentalis. The formal features of the fragment, its thickness and frame breadth as well as its elaboration suggest, excluding the possibility of funerary or building contexts, that the slab was the front side of a statue base. The letters COM at the beginning of the first line can be restored to give the name Com[modus], while the fragmentary word FRAT in line 2 gives frat[er] or some of its inflected forms, if one considers the internal coherence of the two words and excludes similar but improbable variants.
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Minima Epigraphica Auctionum (2019). La Estela de la Milesia Dafnis
193–198.Views:148This paper presents an unpublished inscription from the antiquities market. This entry pertains to the Milesian woman Daphnis’ gravestone. A new exemplar of a Milesian citizen who lived in Attica gives a novel anthroponym to Roman prosopography. In this brief note, we discuss the textual and iconographical aspects of the new item.
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Eine magische Gemme mit Inschriften im Akademischen Kunstmuseum der Universität Bonn
205–216Views:91The magical gem published here belongs to the Akademisches Kunstmuseum der Universität Bonn (Abb. 1–2.; measurements: 33 x 24 x 6 mm). It stems from the collection of Klaus Müller, who acquired it in the 1960th or 1970th. Obverse and reverse of the gem are filled with inscriptions, most of them consisting of unknown voces magicae, and possibly some meaningless letters to fill the space. On the obverse a prominent inscription invokes Eloe, that is Elohim, the Jewish God, who entered the magic pantheon like Greek and Egyptian ones and under the name of Iaō, even got an image in the figure of the cock-headed, snake-legged warrior. Eloe here means the great magic Sun god, as becomes apparent by Semese(ilam) in col. d 6. The reverse names Thoth, the Moon god. Thus the gem was an amulet for day and night, that is for ever. The bevel of the gem is left plain, so it could have been personalizied by an inscription, which was not the case; thus in its present form the gem was an amulet for every owner.
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Die letzte Zeile der phrygischen Inschrift von Veziran
17–30Views:66This paper provides a new grammatical and lexicographical analysis of the last line of the Phrygian inscription from Vezirhan based on its Greek version. As a by-product, the system of the medial verbs in Phrygian is also discussed.
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Das Forum von Brigetio
71–77Views:58An inscription, discovered in Kelamantia, but coming from the amphitheatre of Brigetio, includes the term ‘forenses’. These forenses had been interpreted as inhabitants of Forum Hadriani, who had reserved places in the amphitheatre of Brigetio. The author contests this opinion and shows that the forenses are the inhabitants of one of the two civil settlements of the the camp of Brigetio, most probably of the the vicus situated 2 km west of the camp. Under Septimius Severus or Caracalla this vicus will receive the rank of a municipium.
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The date and circumstances of the Heliodoros affair: Considerations on the Seleucus IV dossier from Maresha
9–19Views:77In 2005 and 2006 in the Hellenistic city of Marise (Marisha/Bet Guvrin, Israel) five adjoining fragments of a Greek inscription has been found. The stele contains three letters: an order from Seleucus IV (187-175 B.C.) to his chancellor Heliodoros about a certain Olympiodoros, who was put in charge of the sanctuaries of Koilē Syria and Phoinikē; a letter from Heliodoros to Dorymenes (who was in all probability the strategos of Koilē Syria and Phoinikē at that time); and a letter from Dorymenes to a certain Diophanes (probably the hyparchos of the district of Marise). The letters are dated to the month Gorpiaios of the year 134 S.E. (summer of 178 B.C.). There is no doubt that Heliodoros in the dossier of Marise, and Heliodoros in the Second Book of Maccabees (ch. 3–4) is the same person who attempted to plunder the Temple of Jerusalem, but according to the 2Macc 3:25–27 he has suffered a divine punishment. In this paper I am arguing that the “Heliodoros-affair” happened in the earlier years of Seleucus IV’s reign, probably nine or eight years before Olympiodoros was put in charge of religious affairs in Koilē Syria and Phoinikē. If we accept this chronological order, the known list of four strategoi of Koilē Syria and Phoinikē can be easily put together.
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CIL III 9527 as Evidence of Spoken Latin in the Sixth-century Dalmatia
99-106Views:180The epitaph of Priest Iohannes (CIL III 9527, Salona, August 13, 599 or AD 603) is one of the few inscriptions from the sixth-century Salona, which can be dated with precision. It is also one of the rare inscriptions from Dalmatia of this period, which mention a person (proconsul Marcellinus) known from other sources (Registrum epistularum of Pope Gregory the Great). However, its linguistic importance seems to be summarized in the remark of its most recent editor Nancy Gauthier (2010) that the language of the epitaph reflects the features of Latin spoken in Dalmatia at the time (“la langue vivante”). The aim of this paper was to check the plausibility of this statement by comparing the Vulgar Latin features in the inscription with the results of research on Latin in late Dalmatia. Also, a new interpretation of the word obsis l. 13 is proposed.
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Sasanian seals in Hungarian collections
179–183Views:58There are relatively few Sasanian seals in the Hungarian archaeological collections, and there is only one that was found in Hungary. Their review has been made timely by the appearance of a few pieces in the art trade. One of their characteristic motifs is the resting ram, but resting griffin and a winged szphinx also appear as motifs.
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A Curse Against the Greens
117–121.Views:103The curse tablet presented in this study is part of the collection of Musée Bargoin in Clermont-Ferrand. After its discovery in 1906, it was forwarded to Auguste Audollent for examination. However, no scholarly investigation has been conducted on the tablet since then, and it has not been published, save for a short reference. The tablet, as indicated by its inscription, may have been made with the intent of influencing the outcome of a North African chariot race involving the Green team.
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A Sardinien boundary dispute and agriculture
149–157Views:42In AD 69 the proconsul Helvius Agrippa had to settle a boundary dispute between two small Sardinian communities. One of them, the Galillenses, were permitted to produce the tablet pertaining to the matter from the imperial archive. The inscription fails to mention if the Galillenses had taken any action to get the tabula from Rome. Specialist literature does not give any viable explanation for this absence. The conclusion may thus be drawn that the reason for the Galillenses’ attempt to delay ‘handing over’ pertains to the anticipated yield of some kind of investment they had made. The article tries to prove that the Galillenses attempted postponing the deadline with the aim of saving crops awaiting harvest.
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Valerius and Decoratus Crescens on CIL III 15169
91–94Views:48The paper examines a rediscovered inscription (CIL III 15169) and its dating. It raises the question why the relief depicts one man, though a father and his son were buried under the gravestone.
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Mala bestia foras dato. Spelling mistakes and loan phrases as means of interpretation of a Latin magical text
37–48Views:590In 1911, Auguste Audollent received a lead tablet with a Latin inscription on both sides coming from North Africa. It was lying almost undetected and forgotten for nearly one hundred years until the Hungarian visiting professor György Németh rediscovered it in the storage room of the Musée Bargoin in Clermont-Ferrand, France. The recently finished complete reading of the text and its commentary will be published soon by Gy. Németh and the author of the present paper. This article aims to consider all the word forms and phrases of the tablet which differ from the Latin standard in order to look for an answer if the target, the context and the sources can be identified with the help of linguistic tools.
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The Island of Laws
5–14Views:51According to the well-known opinion of Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Plato was not familiar with Cretan customs when he wrote the Laws. If we compare the text of Nomoi with Cretan law inscriptions from the 7th-5th centuries, we can conclude that Plato’s knowledge of the laws of Cretan poleis was more profound than it had been assumed. It is especially true in the case of the regulation of alcohol consumption on the basis of Laws 666a-b and an inscription form Eleutherna (Nomima II.98; Lupu 323).
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A Possible Interpretation
17–24Views:110This paper attempts to interpret a gem of uncertain date and questionable origin, with Greek inscriptions and letters, and which is in the National Library of France (BNF inv.58.2220). Based on previous interpretations and the surviving impression and description of a pendant which is very similar to it in material and subject, it can be shown that the gem is original, and Christian, based on the depictions on it and the clearly legible word "ΧΡΙCΤΟC".