Beschreibung:
This contribution offers some remarks relating to four lemovices funeral inscriptions which pose difficulties of reading and / or interpretation. The first dates back to the 1st century p. C. and the three others, already published in this same review in 2017, are from the Antonine-Severan period. We first study the consecration of a monimentum (for monumentum), raised by a personage of Peregrine status for the well-being of an emperor who is most probably Caligula. Dedicating a tomb for the prosperity of a living person is apparently paradoxical, but this act is clarified thanks to an inscription from Palhers (Lozère), in the city of theGabali, and thanks to various other testimonies, which confirm that, in the Ancient societies, especially in the Celtic world, the dead were asked for active help for the living : the homage paid to the deceased returned as a benefit for the person or the community who had rendered it. This explains why the author of the dedication studied here wanted to extend the hoped-for protection to the emperor. We also deduce from this text that the monimentum was probably a mausoleum – temple, a heroön. The numerous large stone blocks visible in the walls of the parish church of Saint-Thyrse , and others which have been re-used in the structure of the contemporary bridge, could well have belonged to this monument. The inscription from Grand-Bourg (Creuse) is now reduced to two fragments re-used in the entry and the staircase of cellar of a shop in the community center. In the 18th century, it was a little more complete, but it had been clumsily read, probably due to the lack of sufficient lighting. These two handicaps produced a very mutilated, difficult to interpret and especially on the last line. However the remaining parts allow us to affirm that this is indeed the dedication from a family mausoleum of Roman citizens (the father and his two children) without doubt another heroön raised for the wellbeing and prosperity of the living family. Jabreilles-les-Bordes (Haute-Vienne) also has a lintel from a family mausoleum for Roman citizens, although the type of monument which is the subject of the dedication is not specified. The text, very elliptical, is nevertheless complete and contains the very Latin Italian names of four characters (the father, the son -dedicator of the mausoleum -, the latter’s deceased wife and the latter’s father). A new branch of the gens Annia is reported, certainly a member of the lemovice social elite, as we try to show. The dedication of the last mausoleum (Glénic, Creuse) is doubly exemplary. First, it helps to understand how a family of the Peregrine Lemovice elite obtained Roman naturalization, perhaps through the intervention of a Legate of Aquitaine from the end of the second century ; then, it shows the effects of the change of status on the nomenclature and the names of the persons concerned, in the context of local onomastic practices. These four documents which are united by their destination (family dedications of funeral monuments) are of great interest. First, because they offer a set of particularities in their modes of composition and writing (use of the nominative, absence of dedication to the gods Manes), as well as in the nomenclature (variations in the expression of citizen filiation, changes of gentes, polyonymy) and the onomastics of the Roman citizen families stage (affirmation of Romanity by very Latin-Italian gentes who also classified their carriers socially, prolonged use of the first name at a time when loosing employment, but also a Latin-Gallic onomastic mix, expression of a society well established in the region). However, these texts do not make it possible to specify how well established ; while it is clear that these mausoleums signal the close presence of the heritage land of the families concerned, no archaeological evidence currently allows them to be linked to an important rural establishment, as can be seen, for example, at the Bac des Cars (Corrèze), where the mausoleums and the villa are together. No reference either, in these dedications, to any political career, which would be expected from people who belonged to the elite of the Lemovice society. Although the mausoleums were monuments reserved for the private exaltation of family glory, at least in the countryside, it was in the towns that the possible successes of eminent family members in public life were reaffirmed by the inscriptions on the pedestals of statues.
Sont proposées ici quelques remarques sur quatre dédicaces de probables mausolées ruraux. La première est celle d’un herôon familial ; les trois autres, déjà publiées dans cette même revue en 2017, méritaient un commentaire complémentaire et différent. Elles offrent, en effet, d’intéressantes particularités dans leurs modes de composition et de rédaction ainsi que dans la nomenclature et l’onomastique des familles citoyennes romaines, dont l’une venait peut-être d’acquérir la citoyenneté. Ces monuments de l’exaltation privée de la gloire familiale aident ainsi à se représenter un peu ce qu’était l’élite lémovice du Haut-Empire dont il ne subsiste quasiment plus de trace épigraphique.