The turn of the millennium was rife with changes for the Roman world from Republic to Empire, from civil war to Pax Romana, and from senatorial rule to rule by dynasty. As evidenced through its linguistic archaisms and the documentation of outdated marital customs, the Laudatio Turiae serves as an inscriptional bridge between the customs of the Roman Republic and the turbulent beginnings of the Roman Empire.
While linguistic change is inevitable as long as the language is alive and spoken outside of an academic sphere, major disruptions to the native environment of any dialect can hasten its mutation. Encompassing such events as the assassination of Julius Caesar, the Roman civil wars, the rise of Caesar’s heir Octavian, and the beginning of the Imperial Age of Rome, the language contained in the Laudatio Turiae[1] reflects such transition between eras. With war comes population movement and diffusion of ideas from culture to culture, and with a successful war comes an influx of wealth and prosperity such as Augustus bestowed upon his capital city. A mix of archaic grammatical forms, Classical Latin, and unusual structures particular to the inscription, the LT provides a semi-complete[2] guide to language evolution. Wistrand records vocuam (II.33), which emerges as vacuam in its Classical form,[3] as a natural sound progression evidenced in similar words such as vocivus (which emerged as the Classical vacivus).[4] However, the LT is the only known usage of vocuus instead of vacuus, illustrating the singularity of this narrative’s linguistic structure. Furthering this uniqueness are the abundance of archaisms, some of which repeat multiple times. Appearing in four separate locations, the LT[5] uses the archaic phoneme of short u in words such as emancupata (I.16) and fidissuma (II.43) instead of the Classical phoneme of short i (emancipata and fidissima), which later Latin traditionally chooses to use.[6] Epigraphers can identify similar constructions to the word fidissuma specifically in multiple inscriptions including the Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus, the Elogium of Gaius Duilius, a Record of Posthumous Honors for Gaius Caesar, and the formidable Monumentum Ancyranum which records Augustus’ Res Gestae.[7] Although these individual works all date to different years, ranging from as early as 260 BCE to as late as 77 CE,[8] this only serves to represent the linguistic evolution of the LT as a whole. While still similar in date to the Laudatio Turiae, three of these inscriptions reflect official diction, two of which are current with Turia’s laudatio funebris. These similar language patterns, which are also seen in the Elogium of Gaius Duilius (originally composed in the 3rd century BCE), evidence that the Laudatio Turiae uses language deviations common to its contemporaries as well as archaisms common to its forebearers. Traceable to the 3rd century BCE during Rome’s Republic, this phonemic preference only becomes outdated after the early imperial age during Claudius’ reign with the Julio-Claudian dynasty and the imperial power firmly established.
Wistrand and Gordon both record a similar archaism in II.26 succeptum, although their sources for explanation vary.[9] While Wistrand looks directly to the ancient grammarian Servius as his reference and Gordon instead sources Kühner and Holzweissig’s Ausfürliche Grammatik der lateinischen Sprache, both arrive at the same conclusion that it is a variant of the Classical susceptum, which Kühner and Holzweissig explain forms when the prefix sub- is placed in front of a c, f, g, or p.[10] In another example of the transient nature of language change and humanity’s effect on it, the viewer can find two grammatical forms in the LT that are rare in Classical Latin, but reemerge to newfound popularity in the Late Latin from the 3rd century CE onward. In the case of II.1-2 “nisi parasses…polliceretur,” “the use of the imperfect subjunctive instead of the normal pluperfect subjunctive in the apodosis of a contrary-to-fact conditional sentence referring to the past”[11] has almost disappeared by Livy’s time, which overlaps with many of the events featured in the LT[12], and is completely gone after Augustus’ reign, only to resurface almost 2 centuries later. The use of patior in II.27 with a simple infinitive reflects the same usage fluctuations as “nisi parasses…polliceretur” with the exception that epigraphers cannot give a particular name to the beginning of the waning of its usage beyond the Classical age of Latin.[13] However, lest someone question whether any diversion from the Classical Latin word form is automatically labelled an archaism, in I.27 and II.41 of the LT the form divertio can be found, which in Classical Latin would be rendered as divortio.[14] There are records of this alternate spelling from all ages of the Latin language,[15] demonstrating how versatile and ranging the language of the LT is.
Perhaps what makes the language of the LT such an anomaly, and such a fascinating study, is the emphasis on correct pronunciation and emphasis found embedded in the inscription itself. These particular practices further the existence of the LT as a bridge between eras, as they are not common to the Augustan period. In one instance the inscription records the imperfections of the laudator’s actual speech as opposed to the grammatically correct version meant: necesset instead of necesse est (II. 40).[16] Along these same lines, the engraver of this inscription added certain punctuation and spacing to inform the reader of the proper pronunciation and pauses to use when reciting the laudatio aloud. Literacy at this time period was limited in the Roman population[17], so it would not be wrong to assume that very few passerbys would be capable of reading the inscription that Turia’s husband so devotedly erected. Thus, a literate person may be required as interpreter for those illiterate companions curious about the abnormally large marble tablet. To aid such a recitation, the engraver left spaces between certain words to indicate pauses, emphasis, or syntax to be used by the laudatory,[18] a practice not considered customary during the Augustan-Nerva period of the Empire.[19] Apex – doubts about whether it’s a scratch/mistake/random use The apices and I longae, which are not uncommon to the LT’s time period, are also haphazardly employed to indicate stress in the seemingly random pattern that characterizes the inscriptions of this era[20]
All of these added punctuations and syntax raise the question of the laudator’s intent for his laudatio funebris. Addressed to his as yet unknown “Uxoris,”[21] and read aloud at her graveside,[22] it is a seemingly intimate recollection of his wife’s life and pietas. Yet, it is recorded for posterity in such a way as to recommend recitations and recognition from strangers who happen upon the memorial. Perhaps the laudator believed his delivery of the laudatio funebris to be too personal or too wrought with emotion[23] to be spoken in public, but wished to preserve his wife’s fame,[24] and so commissioned this inscription.
Whatever his motives, the laudator succeeded in creating an inscription that perpetuated his wife’s fame and memory to future generations, albeit somewhat fractured. The physical engravings and the language recorded in the LT tell scholars much about the development of Latin and the LT’s place as a link between the Republican and Imperial Eras. However, its content, especially its female representation, further the LT’s position as a bridge spanning multiple time periods. Readers can find the best evidence of this mix of archaic and imperial gender mores in the drama over the will.[25] With both parents murdered during the chaos of the Rome’s great Civil War, and her fiancé and brother-in-law both away at war,[26] it fell upon Turia to seek vengeance and make sure that her father’s will was administered correctly.[27] While not uncommon for a time filled with uncertainty, fear, and bloodshed, society typically reserved seeking vengeance for males. Thus Turia’s involvement was an abnormality; one which was to be repeated during the proscriptions of 43 BCE, when the Triumvirs forced Turia’s husband to flee for his life.[28] However, it is the resultant struggle over her father’s will that truly shows the mix of ancient tradition and modern necessity that exists in Turia’s family.
Originally married sine manus, the laudator describes how Turia’s parents entered into a coemptio union of which there are two types: matrimonii causa and fiduciae causa.[29] While both types of coemptio resulted in a transfer of property seen in the traditional cum manus marriage, by undergoing a fiduciae causa ceremony (essentially a ceremonial “sale” of the uxor)[30], Turia’s mother gained the right to inherit from her husband as if she were his daughter. However, the mother and father perished concurrently, and people claiming to belong to the same gens as Turia’s father pursued the will’s invalidation since it had not included the mother (in her position as legal daughter of her husband) as an heir. In their claim, the gentiles declared that Turia should be sole heir since she was the only remaining legal daughter of her father; her sister-in-law had entered into a cum manus marriage with her husband Cluvius and was thus considered under his potestas and no longer a part of her agnate family. However, the law required Turia as a female not under the manus of her husband to have a tutela mulierem, essentially a male guardian whose consent Turia required before enacting certain legal or business ventures.[31] Traditionally a member of the female’s agnate family,[32] the gentiles demanded guardianship of Turia, which would allow them to safeguard any property she inherited and keep it within the her agnate family. Unfortunately for them, Turia protested that the will had not been violated, and even if it had been made illegitimate, she declared that she would honor her father’s wishes and share her property with her husband and sister. Furthermore, she argued that those who declared the will negligible could not claim to be a tutela mulierem for her, as they were not of the same gens as her father.
Much like the language of the LT, these legal family dynamics reveal an evolution in line with the changing circumstances of the Roman world. With three different marriages represented among the three unions discussed in the LT, the reader receives a vivid insight into the Roman marital status. Common in the early Republican era, marriages in manu, which resulted in the bride ceding all legal control and property to her husband, nevertheless fell out of fashion during the Augustan time period, so much as to be considered a rarity.[33] Turia’s mother and father originally wed sine manus, and yet later on decided to enact a coemptio resulting in a cum manus unio so that she could inherit property after his death. Turia’s sister begins her married state in manu, yielding all possessions to her husband and entering under his agnate family’s potestas. Turia and her laudator husband’s marital union is officially sine manus, and yet Turia insists that the property within her marriage is shared completely with her husband.[34] While these comingled assets did not align with the strict patriarchal control in a cum manus marriage, they did not align with the strict agnate control of legal assets seen in most sine manus marriages. This unique characteristic of Turia and the laudator’s marriage positions it as the perfect intermediate between the archaism of her mother and sister’s marital status and the common practice of the Augustan sine manus martial custom.
Describing the marriage customs of the past alongside the more commonplace unions of Augustus’ time, the Laudatio Turiae uses language that reflects that melding of the old Roman Republic and the burgeoning Empire. Uniting the two, the Laudatio Turiae illustrates how the evolution within the Roman world made themselves manifest in the language and the culture.
1. Appianus of Alexandria and John Davies, The History of Appian of Alexandria: In Two Parts : The First Consisting of the Punick, Syrian, Parthian, Mitbridatick [sic], Illyrian, Spanish and Hannibalick Wars : The Second Containing Five Books of the Civil Wars of Rome .. (London: John Amery, 1690),
2. Arthur E. Gordon, Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983)
3. Edgar H. Sturtevant, The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin (Groningen [Turf-singel 3]: Bouma's Boekhuis, 1968)
4. Erik Wistrand, The So-Called Laudatio Turiae (Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1976)
5. Eve D’Ambra, Roman Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)
6. Hugh Lindsay, “The ‘Laudatio Murdiae’: Its Content and Significance,” Societe d’Etudes Latines de Bruxelles (2004):
7. John Bodel, Epigraphic Evidence: Ancient history from inscriptions (London: Routledge, 2001),
8. Judith Evans Grubbs, Women and the Law in the Roman Empire: a Sourcebook on Marriage, Divorce, and Widowhood, (London: Routledge, 2002)
9. Kristina Milnor, Gender, Domesticity, and the Age of Augustus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
10. “Livy,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed July 30, 2014, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/344974/Livy
11. Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed. , s.v. “diuortium.”
12. Raphael Kühner and Friedrich Holzweissig, Ausführliche Grammatik der Lateinischen Sprache (Hannover: Hahn, 1966)
13. William Smith, D.C.L., LL.D. A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, s.v. “Matrimonium.”
14. W. Warde Fowler, “On the New Fragment of the So-Called Laudatio Turiae,” The Classical Review 19 (1905):