Roman tombstones

Roman tombstone base, 2nd century CE, Lincoln, British Museum

The British Museum had a few Roman tombstones when I visited in 2017. It’s hard, when viewing them, not to think about how many more there must have been that were lost to history. Seeing them in a museum, protected and preserved, allows us a glimpse into history, but also removes them from the area of the graves they were created to mark.

Tombstone for Gaius Saufeius, 1st century CE, Lincoln, British Museum

Tombstone, 1st century CE, Lincoln, British Museum

Tombstone, 3rd century CE, Lincoln, British Museum

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Don’t let the bastards get you down

The inscription below the name and dates on this tombstone is a psuedo-Latin rendering of the maxim “Don’t let the bastards get you down.” If you were somehow capable of finding an ancient Roman and stating this to him, he would probably think you were out of your head, because the phrase meaning and humor don’t actually translate into Latin. But as someone who enjoyed reading Latin for All Occasions and Latin for Even More Occasions and writing scripts in Latin that ripped off bad contemporary jokes (it was for a school competition), it makes me chuckle.

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A Grave Concern: B.M.V.

When we were at Calvary Cemetery, Mike pointed out the abbreviation on the pedestal and asked why the letters would be in that order. Based on the rest of the inscription being in Latin, I’m assuming its because the most common order of the words “Blessed Virgin Mary” is “Beatae Mariae Virginis.” I’ve seen some English sites try to maintain the abbreviation by making it “Blessed Mary the Virgin.”

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