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Marble funerary Inscription of Caecilius Hilarius, physician to the famous Caecilia Metella. Her circular tomb is still seen as a large monument on the Appian Way south of Rome.

The inscription reads:

Q(uintus) Caecilius Caeciliae / Crassi〈uxoris〉 l(ibertus) Hilarus, medicus,
/ Caecilia duarum / Scriboniarum l(iberta) / Eleutheris, / ex partem dimidiae sibi êt suis.

meaning: “Quintus Caecilius Hilarus, a doctor, / Freedman of Caecilia, wife of Crassus. / Caecilia Eleutheris, freedwoman of / two Scriboniae. With the share of a half. / For himself (themselves?) and their (family).”

The doctor’s praenomen Quintus was taken from the name of Caecilia Metella’s father. Caecilia Eleutheris was Hilarus’ wife. She was the freedwoman of the two “Scriboniae,” one of whom was the first wife of Augustus (40-39 BC) and mother of his only child, Julia. The other sister was married to the son of Pompey the Great, Sextus Pompeius, who was defeated by Augustus/Octavian in 36 BC.

In the second line, the inscriber ran out of space and put the final “us” of “medicus” in small letters.

27 BC / 14 AD.

Found in Rome on the via Salaria in the so-called “Monumentum Caeciliorum“.

© Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA

Fragment of roman brick with the orbicular stamp

Duor(um) [Le]sagor(um)

meaning   

“(Brick Stamp) of the Two Lesagori”.

The “two Lesagori” were probably brothers. The name of one of them, Lucius Lesagius Tritogenes, is known from another stamp.

2nd century AD

© Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA