Di Manes, m. pl.
the spirits of the dead,
the divine spirits. This phrase in the dative case is regularly found at
the head of funerary inscriptions from the end of the 1st century BCE through
the 2nd century CE.
Auxesis, -is f.
growth, increase; a
Greek noun of rare occurrence and an unusual cognomen.
Agathopus, i m.: a Greek cognomen found
commonly in the eastern Mediterranean and in Italy during the Empire and later
(e.g., graffito in Ostia, where the name is written in Greek; two
graffiti in Pompeii advertise Agathopus' shop for its high
quality garum or liquamen, a fish sauce favored by the Romans);
his praenomen, Gaius, and his nomen mark him as a freedman of the
gens Domitia.
heres, heredis m./f.
heir; since
slaves could neither bequeathe nor receive a bequest, both are clearly free.
Livy (AUC 39.9) tells of the prostitute Hispala Faecenia's
legal provision in 187 BCE to make her aristocratic young lover Aebutius her
heir.
amica, -ae f.
a female friend
(rarely); a concubine, mistress, courtesan. It is in this latter sense
that the elegiac love poets used the word. To these possible meanings B.Rawson adds "de facto spouse" ("Roman Concubinage and Other de facto Marriages" TAPA 1974.283).
Bene Merens, -entis
deserving well;
well-deserving. In later Latin, especially in the catacombs, this
conventional phrase may be found as a single word and in the perfect tense,
e.g., benemerita.
[hoc monumentum]: often found together with
fecit and a reference to the deceased in the dative (here,
amicae), this formulaic phrase of dedication is often abbreviated as
H M or omitted entirely from tombstone inscriptions.
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