Stele iscritte con ritratti di giovani da Classe (Ravenna)
In: Archeologia Classica: 72, 2021
DOI: 10.48255/J.ArchCl.LXXII.2021.24
Several contributions focus on iconography and inscriptions concerning childhood and youth in Roman time, also by paying attention to lower classes and to families which don’t resemble the canonical ideal of the legitimate familia. In such perspective, this paper analyses two tombstones from
Classe (Ravenna) dated to the first half of the I century A.D., where the inscri
ption is accompanied
by the portrait of a young boy. It emerges that the construction of funerary identity consists in the re-elaboration of iconographic and stylistic models which were common, at that time, in Ravenna and
its vicinity: thus, commissioners used and adapted them according with their economic capacity and their commemorative aspirations. The inscriptions are also quite interesting: the first is one of the few attestations of a missicius, while the other mentions a centurio classiarius, who was embarked
on a ship that probably had the rare name of a river in Persia.
Keywords: Ravenna, steles, funerary art, funerary portraits, young boys, military fleet, classiarii