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Marco Buonocore (éd.),Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Inscriptiones Calabriae Apuliae Samnii Sabinorum Piceni Latinae. Supplementum. Regio Italiae quarta. vol. IX. Suppl. Pars 1, Fasc. 3 et Fasc. 4

Federico Santangelo
p. 275-276
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Marco Buonocore (éd.),Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Inscriptiones Calabriae Apuliae Samnii Sabinorum Piceni Latinae. Supplementum. Regio Italiae quarta. vol. IX. Suppl. Pars 1, Fasc. 3 et Fasc. 4, Berlin et Boston, De Gruyter, 2020 et 2022 / ISBN 9783110708981 et 9783110771091, 239€ et 249€

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1Marco Buonocore passed away on 23 December 2022, just over two months after the publication of the fourth issue of the supplement to the edition of the Latin inscriptions of the regio IV on which he had been working for over four decades. With an overall tally of well beyond 2,600 pages, the achievement is just towering; a fifth fascicle of indexes is awaited, and will give a further measure of its importance. The last two Bände follow the same principles as the first two (reviewed in Anabases 33, 2021, 277-279): they are thus divided into a section of addenda et corrigenda, and one of new inscriptions. By the end of the fourth volume, we are presented with 2,584 tituli novi, and addenda et corrigenda to over 2,800 inscriptions from CIL IX. That is perhaps the clearest testimony to B.’s achievement, and of the commitment to thorough, judicious, and humane scholarship that presupposes and pervades this work. Just as in the previous two instalments, each inscription is thoroughly discussed. Direct inspection is the unifying operating principle, whenever possible; B. has taken care of it in the vast majority of cases, but he freely acknowledges his debt to, or collaboration with, many individual scholars (the names of Cesare Castellani for Alba Fucens, Ezio Matiocco for Marruvium, and Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai for the Sabine territories occur with special frequency); the same unwavering attention to, and deep respect for the work of others inform the extensive bibliographical summaries that accompany each entry. Full editions are given for the new texts; the most complex and historically significant ones are also given in Italian translation. An ample number of images is included. Close attention is paid throughout to the manuscript tradition: an area in which B. was an unrivalled authority.

2The aim, then, is to provide a comprehensively up-to-date corpus, which might enable readers to access reliable texts and to become aware of the issues that make their documents significant or complex. No overview is given of the geographical settings in which the communities under discussion are located, nor of their history: this work is of course a supplement to Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum IX, and the dialogue with that work and its intellectual tradition is ever ongoing, even when new inscriptions are discussed. It is also carried out, of course, in the same language in which the original project was conducted: B. put his Latin prose to the service of effective and economical description, and to the formulation of crisp and measured judgement (‘descripsi ut potui’, ‘sane congruunt’, ‘salte tribuerim’).

3Volume 3 consists of two sections, which are both devoted to the territories traditionally associated to the Aequi and the Marsi and their communities; volume 4 moves northwards, and goes on to encompass the Sabine territory, with Amiternum, Nursia, Reate, Forum Novum, Trebula, and Cures (like Mommsen, B. identified a discrete area between Forum Novum and Cures). Each reader will quite rightly come up with their preferred selection, but some pièces de résistance stand out, whether because of their intrinsic interest or because of the challenges that they set to the editor. The new inscriptions include the wonderfully preserved Fasti from Alba Fucens (7873), while a new edition is given of the Fasti of Amiternum (4190-4192) and of the heavily fragmentary ones from Forum Novum in the Sabina (4769). Other pieces are likely to command renewed and close attention: two monumental inscriptions from the amphitheatre of Alba (7913); the Caso Cantovio tablet that has raised so much interest among the students of the Roman conquest of Italy (7858), as well as the remarkable text from Falacrinae (8644) that sheds such a poignant light on the aftermath of the Social War; the evidence for the activity of the magistrates of the vicus Supinas near Marruvium (3849); the funerary monument of the Titecii Rufi from the same district (7813); the dedication to Neptune of the portitor Ocrisivae Menander from the Piediluco lake (8633); the extraordinary dossier on the cult of Silvanus from Trebula Mutuesca (8877); or the arresting funerary monument of the Occii from Fara Sabina, now at the Museo Nazionale Romano (8978). There is much to be gained, though, from the cumulative impression that sizeable clusters of material convey, whether on the religious life of Alba Fucens, the activity of the municipal elites of Marruvium and their refined epigraphical culture, or the presence of freedmen and freedwomen in the territory of Reate. B.’s ingenuity and commitment, however, shine through every single entry, and most impressively, perhaps, through those devoted to the extremely small texts: the edition of the fragment of a funerary inscription from Castellaccio, first copied out in November 2015, for which only two letters survive, is a model in that regard (8870: -NA-).

4Singling out specific entries, in fact, ends up amounting to an invidious and somewhat unfair operation. The key point of B.’s project has been to pay deep, undivided attention to each document, regardless of how striking, demanding, or important it might be deemed to be. That is arguably the key legacy that this project puts forward. As well as enabling more informed research on the history and epigraphy of a highly significant portion of Roman Italy, B.’s supplement on regio IV presents us with an outstanding paragon of scholarly rigour, a treasure-trove of teachable examples, and a compelling model of how to do justice to our evidence, from the small to the big picture, and back. But there is more: those who had the good fortune of knowing Marco Buonocore – as a correspondent, as a mentor, as a friend – will readily see that there is no mismatch here between the author and his work.

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Federico Santangelo, « Marco Buonocore (éd.),Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Inscriptiones Calabriae Apuliae Samnii Sabinorum Piceni Latinae. Supplementum. Regio Italiae quarta. vol. IX. Suppl. Pars 1, Fasc. 3 et Fasc. 4 »Anabases, 38 | 2023, 275-276.

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Federico Santangelo, « Marco Buonocore (éd.),Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Inscriptiones Calabriae Apuliae Samnii Sabinorum Piceni Latinae. Supplementum. Regio Italiae quarta. vol. IX. Suppl. Pars 1, Fasc. 3 et Fasc. 4 »Anabases [En ligne], 38 | 2023, mis en ligne le 01 novembre 2023, consulté le 18 février 2025. URL : http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/anabases/16698 ; DOI : https://0-doi-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/10.4000/anabases.16698

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