Heikki Solin, professor of Latin philology at the University of Helsinki, Secretary General of the Association Internationale d’Epigraphie Grecque et Latine, and former director of the Finnish Institute at Rome, is an epigrapher and historian of considerable accomplishment and wide renown. The bibliography of his works that concludes this volume of Analecta Epigrahica commences in 1957 and extends to 276 items. Among his current duties, he exercises primary responsibility for preparation of the new edition of CIL 10 (Bruttium, Lucania, Campania, Southern Latium, Sicily, and Sardinia).1
For the occasion of Solin’s sixtieth birthday, the volume under review here collected and reprinted 172 notices that originally appeared between 1970 and 1997 (in German) as “Analecta Epigraphica” in the journal Arctos: Acta Philologica Fennica. The plan for the present volume was hatched “Romae in caupona quadam” by colleagues and students who presumed they would do greater service by making these pieces more widely available than by offering their own scripta in a traditional Festschrift.
Analecta Epigraphica retains the original ( Arctos) pagination and note-numbering under the overlay of the new page and note numbers, facilitating the task of cross-referencing. The editors have made minor corrections and additions to the text (marked by brackets), but the most valuable contributions of Kajava and his colleagues are embodied in the addenda and corrigenda (signaled by marginal asterisks and printed together at pp. 401-408), the indices, and the concordances that make this a remarkably rich and utilitarian volume. Thanks to these Solin’s treatment of specific texts can be accessed from the designations of a vast array of other corpora and publications (AE, CIL, et al.), while the body of the Analecta can be searched on multiple bases: onomastic, orthographic, grammatical, geographic, and a variety of “content” categories (e.g., imperatores et domus eorum, res militaris).
Through the years Solin employed his Arctos Analecta to various ends: to publish new texts; to offer new readings of previously published texts; and to elucidate the epigraphical and historical implications of both. Throughout this collection Solin’s revisions, restorations, and explications are informed by the exquisite sensitivity to matters of nomenclature, prosopography, and social history that we might readily expect from a colleague of I. Kajanto and the author or editor of such works as Die griechischen Personennamen in Rom: Ein Namenbuch (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1982), Roman Eastern Policy and Other Studies in Roman History (Helsinki: Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, 1990) and Die stadtrömischen Sklavennamen (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1996).
A closer look at this volume’s nine most recent Analecta, here CLXIV-CLXXII but previously published in Arctos 29 (1995), 30 (1996), and 31 (1997), may serve as notice on the nature and contents of the whole collection. Four of these nine notices treat in relatively brief manner some nine specific names or individuals. In most, Solin proposes new readings. For example, (1) Mommsen’s hesitant reading of C. Luccius Eros / actor on a small altar from Anagnia (CIL 10.5905) becomes C. Luccius Fronto; (2) a new text published in 1996 (M. Silvestrini, Studi in onore di Albino Garzeti [Brescia 1996] 454-57) as “[C]armeniu[s] / [sup]erdonav[it]” becomes “Carmenius Niger donavit”; and (3) the honoree recorded on a base from Abella, whom Mommsen (CIL 10.1208) had designated as C. Caelius Verus is restored, upon re-examination of the stone, as C. Caesius Verus. Such revisions not only suggest why a new edition of CIL 10 is needed, but also highlight the still unstable evidence that underlies all synthetic studies of Roman nomenclature. Analecta CLXX moves the treatment of names away from new readings toward the implications of an established reading by offering the cognomen (Caesario) of the sacerdos Isidis [V]olusius [C]aesario (CIL 6.2248), most likely derived from caesaries rather than Caesar, as “ein neues cognomen.”
Solin undertakes nomenclature investigation of a rather larger magnitude in CLXVII (pp. 391-96). Inspired by M. Donderer, Die Architekten der späten römischen Republik und der Kaiserzeit. Epigrapische Zeugnisse (1996), Solin set off in search of the cognomen “Architectus.” What he found and assembled, as corrective or supplement to the TLL, Kajanto, Donderer, and his own (with O. Salomies) Repertorium nominum gentilium et cognominum Latinorum 2nd. ed. (1994) is in essence a small corpus of relevant texts (e.g., CIL 6.148) and a discussion of related questions. Thus he takes up debate about the linguistic background of the cognomen (in his view essentially a Roman creation) and about its social implications (in his view there are no demonstrable connections between the employment of this cognomen and the profession of architect).
Two of the volume’s last nine Analecta collect nine short notes under the heading “Varia urbana.” Herein, for example, Solin restores the praenomen [P.] to the Servilius Isauricus of CIL I (2nd ed) 2954 (on whom see now Anne Kolb at G. Alföldy, CIL 6 [1996] 40856-40858); he revises the reading of a tomb inscription published in 1916 ( Bull. com. 43) from OC RUDELEN to o, crudele nefas so that it can be added to the initium noted by Lommatzsch at Buechler, Carmina Latina Epigraphica 3, p. 165; and in respect to the debated meaning of the second word in the graffito MAXIMILLA ROMA (ICUR 26576), Solin observes that Roma is very unlikely to be a woman’s name.
The collection of Analecta ends (p.400) with “CLXXII: Minima Minimorum,” two paragraphs that comment on the funerary inscription of Lollia Chymasis (M. Buonocore, Epigraphica 59 [1997] 247-49) and revise the reading of the name Julia Tertia preserved on an altar from Cos (D. Berges, Rundaltäre aus Kos und Rhodes 117, Nr. 38). Because Analecta Epigraphica is essentially a treasure trove of the kinds of detailed observations only made possible by a long-tried and well-honed sense of the epigrapher’s calling, Solin’s colleagues need not regret their decision to assemble this volume in lieu of their own scripta. Moreover, because it is surely as a reference book of sorts that Analecta Epigraphica will prove most helpful to others, we can thank the editors for the one-hundred pages of thorough indices and concordances that will ensure its use in timely and efficient manner.
Notes
1. See H. Solin, “Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum X: Passato, Presente, Futuro,” Epigrafi e studi epigrafi in Finlandia; Acta Instituti Romani Finlandia 19 (Rome 1998) 81-117.