BI·6

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Inscription
Reading in transliteration:	iouiku / uipios
Reading in original script:
Object:	BI·6 Cerrione (stela)
Position:	front
Orientation:	270°
Direction of writing:	dextroverse
Script:	North Italic script (Lepontic alphabet)
Letter height:	7–10 cm2.756 in <br />3.937 in <br />
Number of letters:	12
Number of words:	2
Number of lines:	2
Workmanship:	carved
Condition:	complete
Archaeological culture:	Roman republican period [from object]
Date of inscription:	100–40 BC [from object]
Type:	funerary
Language:	Celtic
Meaning:	'Iouiku the Uipian'
Alternative sigla:	none
Sources:	Cresci Marrone & Solinas 2013: 43 f. no. 6

Images

Stela BI·6 Cerrione with inscription BI·6 from Cresci Marrone & Solinas 2013

Stela BI·6 Cerrione with inscription BI·6 from Cresci Marrone & Solinas 2013

Commentary

First published in Cresci Marrone & Solinas 2011: 92.

Images in Cresci Marrone & Solinas 2011: 93, fig. 87 (photo = Cresci Marrone & Solinas 2013: 44 [in colour]), Brecciaroli Taborelli 2011: 502, tav. 121 (drawing = Cresci Marrone & Solinas 2013: 44).

Inscribed in two dextroverse lines running downward; well legible. Solinas (Cresci Marrone & Solinas 2013: 44) proposes that the lines should be read in succession from left to right iouiku uipios (cf. at the same find place BI·1, BI·5, BI·8, as well as NO·21.1 and maybe GR·1), but analyses the latter as the individual name, the former as an appositive in -ū. We prefer to read the inscription as the ones from Cerrione cited above, with iouiku as the individual name and uipios as the patronym in -ii̯-: 'Iouiku the Uipian'.

The grammar and form of the onomastic formula, with on-stem individual name in -ū and appositive in -ii̯-, are Celtic, as is the individual name i̯ou̯inkū lit. 'the young one'; cf. the Latin inscription no. 30 from the necropolis (first half of 2^nd c. AD), in which the abbreviation io of a father's name may be of the same name according to Cresci Marrone's reading (Cresci Marrone & Solinas 2013: 112). The father's name is more difficult to classify; Solinas (Cresci Marrone & Solinas 2013: 44) compares the name of the freedman uipio in a Latin inscription from the Cerrione necropolis (no. 45 in Cresci Marrone & Solinas 2013), but it is the name of a freedman who died ca. 200 years after the son of uip(i)os, and is altogether not likely to have anything to do with the latter. A preferable comparandum is the Latin praenomen uibius, which is attested as a father's name uibi f. in the Latin inscription no. 13 from the necropolis (Augustan age) (possibly also in the younger no. 40, dated to 70–170 AD; cf. Cresci Marrone & Solinas 2013: 137), and in other Roman inscriptions in the Piemonte area; an etymologically Celtic reading is also possible. See the word pages for details.

Corinna Salomon

Bibliography

Brecciaroli Taborelli 2011	Luisa Brecciaroli Taborelli (ed.), Oro, pane e scrittura. Memorie di una comunità "inter Vercellas et Eporediam" [= Studi e ricerche sulla Gallia Cisalpina 24], Roma: Edizioni Quasar 2011.
Cresci Marrone & Solinas 2011	Giovannella Cresci Marrone, Patrizia Solinas, "Il messaggio epigrafico: Riconoscimento del sepolcro e strategia della memoria", in: Luisa Brecciaroli Taborelli (ed.), Oro, pane e scrittura. Memorie di una comunità "inter Vercellas et Eporediam" [= Studi e ricerche sulla Gallia Cisalpina 24], Roma: Edizioni Quasar 2011, 89–106.
Cresci Marrone & Solinas 2013	Giovannella Cresci Marrone, Patrizia Solinas, Microstorie di romanizzazione. Le iscrizioni del sepolcreto rurale di Cerrione, Venezia: Edizioni Ca' Foscari 2013.