Epitaph for Passeria Romula

Epitaph for Passeria Romula, daughter of Lucius, aged four. Unusually, the funerary text begins with the greeting 'have' (hail or greetings) in an attempt to provoke a dialogue between the dead and the living, seeking to attract the attention of the living to visit the
necropolis
and guarantee that Romula's brief earthly passage become engraved in the collective and anonymous memory. The text is engraved upon a plaque found during the 1961-62 archaeological campaign and would have originally been placed upon another funerary monument.

Type of inscription

Funerary

Language

Latin

Technique

Engraving

Reading

HAVE/ PASSERIA L(ucii) F(ilia)/ ROMULA AN(norum)/ IIII/ H(ic) S(ita) E(st)

Translation

Hail! Here lies Passeria Romula, daughter of Lucius, aged 4.

Present location

Museum of Lisbon | Pimenta Palace

Discovery location

Praça da Figueira, Lisboa

Suggested reading

Almeida, J. M.; Ferreira, F. B. (1965) - Varia epigraphica (nova série). Revista de Guimarães. Guimarães: Sociedade Martins Sarmento. 75, pp. 82-109.

Ramirez Sádaba, J. L. (2002) - O homem e a morte na Lusitânia. In Ribeiro, J. C., coord. - Religiões da Lusitânia. Loquuntur Saxa. Lisboa: Museu Nacional de Arqueologia, pp. 301-305.

Identification code​

LxRomana1106020