Black Sword

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Digitia gens

Hi! I noticed your revisions to Digitia gens, and wanted to thank you for what looks like pretty good work expanding the article! I would probably not have found Münzer! I made some additions from epigraphic sources, and a few corrections to morphology (Celado, Basso, Valentis → Celadus, Bassus, Valens). I hope you won't mind my mentioning a couple of things that may be useful if you plan to do this with other gentes!

It's not necessary to italicize words like "gens", "praenomen", or "cognomen", as these are used in English. In funerary inscriptions—probably the largest group for most names—the names in the dative case are usually the people who are buried, with people in the nominative in the same inscription being the people who built or dedicated the tomb. Some funerary inscriptions only have names in the nominative, so that was also used for the deceased, but when some are nominative and some dative, you usually can tell who's dedicating to whom. Sibi suis et libertis libertabus basically means "for himself and his family and freedmen and freedwomen"; if just one or two people are being buried I usually call it a "tomb", and if several people are mentioned or implied, then a "sepulchre", but this isn't a formal distinction, so don't feel obliged to follow it!

Again, these aren't meant as criticisms—apart from the morphology of names and some conventions relating to burials, your Latin must be better than mine! So good work, thank you for putting in the effort, and I hope to see more of your contributions in future! P Aculeius (talk) 14:20, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Howdy! As you may have noticed, it has been more than a decade since I made any major contributions to Wikipedia, so I do not object in the slightest to these tips. The whole thing started because I finally got my hands on a copy of Roman Aristocratic Parties and Families (price tag: ouch) and I happened to have the gens page open on my browser while reading it. Then I glanced up, saw Digitia gens, took a look, and went ahead fixing it. I think I'll be working on expanding the other small gens regularly. I've got the Cossutii in my sights next. Good work on finding the other stray Digitii - when I followed Münzer's throwaway comment and searched in Rome and Paestum for other Digitii, I didn't spot any of the ones you located. As for my Latin, my trusty Latin dictionary and the fact that my first language is Spanish help me significantly!

One thing I want a second opinion on, and since you're already here: the patron of Paestum in the first half of the third century. I believe the Marcus Tullius Cicero (not a descendant of the famous one, as this one's tribe is Maecia) named here were two men, father and son. Primigenus is the father, a freedman, as denoted by his status as an Augustale, while his son, the Roman equestrian Cicero Laurentius Lavinatas, was born free. Thoughts? Black Sword (talk) 19:14, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Hmmm, your plan sounds good to me! I've found that the best way to search for all epigraphy under a certain name is to do a C-S Datenbank search for something like " Digiti", with a leading space, in case any words end in "-digiti", and to find inflected endings. That doesn't always work, because sometimes other words or names start with that, or it's a name that occurs in huge numbers—too many to justify adding them all, or to be practical. But with less common combinations, it works pretty well, and turns up "Digitius", "Digitium", "Digiti", "Digitio", and "Digitiorum", along with "Digitia", "Digitiam", "Digitiae", and "Digitiarum". Even if some of the letters are missing, as long as the entry has the name reconstructed. Since a high percentage of entries are funerary inscriptions, with occasional religious dedications or makers' marks, nominative and dative singular are the most common forms I find.

As for Cicero and Primigenius, no doubt the former was named after the famous one—countless descendants of Tullius freedmen would have been named Marcus, and I'm sure the man who took this name liked people to think he was related to Cicero! I don't think I can be certain that Cicero was the son of Primigenius, since the dedication in honour of Primigenius is dated to 245, while Cicero's is "first half of the third century". But it's certainly plausible, as we don't know how long Primigenius lived, and the words "Laurens Lavinas" appear following both their names. I'm not confident that they're actually part of their names, however. That'd be an awfully long name for a freedman or his son, and we have "eques Romanus" intervening between "Cicero" and "Laurens Lavinas", which does not seem normal if they were all cognomina. And if you notice under Primigenius, his name is in the dative, but "Laurentis Lavinatis" is genitive; they should all be in the same case if the latter is part of his name.

Searching for these words in the same inscription as "Lauren" and "Lavina", there are quite a lot of examples, and it seems that these also follow names, but with intervening titles, and sometimes in other cases than the person's names. So I think this refers to a place, rather than being part of the name. Of course these call to mind the Latin cities of Laurentum and Lavinium, which were commonly conflated in late antiquity; and the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography seems to bear this out, and perhaps answer the question: the people of a more-or-less combined municipality were called "Laurentes Lavinates". So I think what we have here is an indication that Primigenius and Cicero were of a family from Laurentum-Lavinium; they were "Laurentes Lavinates", of which "Laurens Lavinas" in Cicero's inscription is singular, and in the Primigenius inscription it's saying he's "of" Laurentium-Lavinium. It wasn't part of their name, just an indication of where they came from.

One other question occurred to me. You're probably right to say that Cicero was Digitia's patron, but it seemed unusual that her husband was not named, and if I hadn't had your version in front of me I would have assumed that Cicero was the spouse mentioned in the inscription. Can you explain why you didn't conclude that? As I said, your Latin seems to be better than mine, even if I can usually work out funerary inscriptions pretty well! P Aculeius (talk) 22:16, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

RE: Cicero's namesake, I was thinking the same thing regarding his name, which your observations solidify in my mind that his father really did give him the name Cicero to connect back to the orator. Primigenius has inscriptions calling out what a great fellow he was, he had the education to make enough money for his son to be an equestrian and town patron, so I had originally believed that the son was deliberately emphasizing that he was not a freedman like his father, calling attention to his status as a knight, then adding his maternal nomen in imitation of proper Roman noblemen, but your explanation that he was merely stating his hometown is simpler. Not that Occam's Razor is perfect when it comes to Roman prosopography, but wild epileptic trees are more at home on TV Tropes. In summary: I do think Primigenius was a freedman and father of Cicero, and Cicero chose to emphasize his status as an equestrian.

Regarding how I read it, here's the monument itself.

Digitiae Luci filiae Rufinae ob eximiam castitatem <f=E>idem verecundiamque eius

Summary, Digitia is awesome. Note that instead of continuing on despite the space available, it was decided it was preferable for the town patron to be clearly distinguished. Perhaps the husband was originally supposed to be recorded in the space available. Why was he not? We can't guess. Perhaps he annoyed Marcus Cicero.

Marcus Tullius Marci filius Maecia Cicero eques Romanus Laurens Lavinas patronus coloniae coniugi remisso sumptu publico de suo posuit

Marcus Cicero son of Marcus of the tribe Maecia the Roman knight from Laurentum-Lavinium patron of the town to the couple presents public funds

locus datus decreto decurionum

this was placed by order of the ten (i.e. the town council)

The monument is commemorating Digitia for being awesome, Marcus Cicero gets to show off, and they probably made a day of it. It sounds like a perfectly typical feel good local political show, be it then or now. Of course, I could be wrong. Black Sword (talk) 23:34, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

I was typing that I read "coniugi" as dative singular for coniunx, "to/for his wife", but decided to look at the inscription again and see whether I couldn't puzzle it out. I thought I'd save some time by using Google Translate on some of the words—it used to be awful with Latin, but could get individual words and sometimes short passages, but it seems to have improved a lot—and it gives, approximately (I left out some words that I thought would confuse it, but which weren't essential to the meaning): "Because of Rufina's exceptional chastity, the Roman knight Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman patron of the colony, released the couple's public funding and placed a place given to him by decree of the council." Which is not completely sensible, but I think helps, and it clearly supports your interpretation. In funerary inscriptions, "coniugi" usually seems to mean that a tomb was built "to/for his/her husband/wife", but of course this isn't the same situation. P Aculeius (talk) 01:49, 30 March 2024 (UTC)