Description: Fragments of six limestone
architrave blocks, moulded above, from a Doric entablature
(each originally w:
2.05 x h:
0.47 x d:
0.70).
Text:
Inscribed on one face, then erased to receive C.21.
Letters: 0.23; only two blocks yield recognisable groups of letters, but on others there are traces of isolated uprights and serifs.
Date: First or early second century CE
Findspot:
Cyrene, Caesareum: Basilica,
fallen in front of the nortern internal colonnade.
Found in 1935.
Original location: Caesareum: Basilica, on the entablature of the northern internal colonnade
Last recorded location:
Findspot
English translation
Translation by: Editors
(i) . . . Nero . . . ] Ge[rmanicus . . .
(ii) . . . ba]sili[ca . . .
Commentary
Given its size, the architrave must have remained in position during the process of erasure and re-inscription, so that the relation of the blocks to the whole text of which they were a part can be calculated approximately from their position in relation to the text of C.21.
i. underlies the titles of Hadrian in C.21, and is likely therefore to have carried part of the title of an emperor in the earlier text; this was almost certainly Nero, the only first century emperor in whose title the name Germanicus is normally preceded by a letter that incorporates an upright stroke - divi Claudi fil(ius) Germanici Caesaris nepos. If this is correct, it would seem that the basilica was either built or very substantially repaired during Nero's reign.
ii: underlies the word basilicam in C.21 and is presumably from the same word.
Bibliography: Reynolds, 1958 no.III, p. 161, whence AE 1960.268; Gasperini, 1971, B.1 and fig. 17.
Text constituted from: Transcription (Reynolds).
Images
None available (2020).