Opus latericium inscriptum in Christian Aquileia: Epigraphy on terracotta in Late Antiquity

The close examination of some finds from the late antique and Christian period stored in the repository of the National Archaeological Museum of Aquileia led to the analysis of a small-sized clay slab, bearing a funerary inscription with a figurative apparatus. The interest of the artifact doesn’t lie so much in the inscribed text, as rather in the terracotta support, a typology anciently known within the funerary environment, but rarely recorded in Aquileia and not yet studied in a systematic and comprehensive way. The analysis of the tiny slab provides the opportunity for a comparative excursus on similar objects which have been observed elsewhere in the Italian peninsula, as well as to evaluate some hypotheses on the possible original location of the artefact. Lastly, this short essay allows us to re-evaluate the occurrences of fictile epitaphs in Aquileia.