The Chester tombstone label
A museum in Chester is preparing a display about a first-century CE tombstone found in 2019. The stone is broken at the top, so the opening dedication is incomplete, and the mason left no punctuation. The visible text reads: DIS MANIBUS / L(ucius) CALPURNIUS L(ucii) F(ilius) / SIBI ET / CALPURNIAE PRIMAE / CONIUGI PIENTISSIMAE / FECIT. A volunteer has drafted three labels for the case: (A) 'Lucius Calpurnius, son of Lucius, made this for himself and his wife Calpurnia Prima, most dutiful'; (B) 'Lucius Calpurnius, son of Lucius, was made by himself and his wife Calpurnia Prima'; (C) 'Lucius Calpurnius, son of Lucius, made this for his wife alone.' The curator asks you to choose one label and justify it in no more than 45 words for the panel. She is especially worried about SIBI and FECIT, because a visitor has already asked whether SIBI could be ablative.
1. Which label should the curator use? Justify your choice by analysing the cases and the likely ellipsis in the inscription.
Read the worked answer
Label A.
- SIBI is dative, not ablative. It is coordinated by ET with CONIUGI ('for his wife'), and both depend on FECIT. The verb facio can take a dative of the person for whom something is made.
- An ablative of agent would need a/ab with a person and a passive verb; FECIT is active, so label B fails.
- The object of FECIT is omitted because the monument itself supplies it: something like hoc monumentum.
- CONIUGI is dative singular, agreeing with CALPURNIAE PRIMAE; PIENTISSIMAE also modifies the wife. ET joins SIBI and CONIUGI, so label C wrongly isolates the wife.
- DIS MANIBUS is a dative plural dedication to the Shades and does not alter the syntax of the main clause.
2. A colleague says the broken top means we cannot decide whether FECIT means 'made' or 'had made'. How should the label handle that uncertainty?
Read the worked answer
The break does not license 'had made'. The stone has FECIT, perfect active, not the pluperfect FECERAT. Latin uses the pluperfect when one past action is prior to another past action; no such second past event appears here. The missing top may have removed a heading or part of the dedication, but it does not change the tense of the visible verb. The subject is the nominative Lucius; the object is supplied from the monument. If a workshop had been responsible, Latin would more naturally use a passive construction with a/ab or a verb such as iussit. So keep 'made', and if the curator wants caution, phrase it as 'the stone records that Lucius ... made this' rather than changing the tense.