Archaeological Museum of Bologna

The stele is decorated with a frame and ends in a triangular pediment with rose at the center. The text is written in verse in different meters: a hexameter, a pentameter and an iambic trimeter.

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Below the inscription there is a relief which shows a container with three feet, three rings and a handle. From that an object similar to a wooden stick comes out. Most of the researchers consider it a modium, a container for grain's measurement, and a rutellum, tools of the frumentarius (the man who sells grains or addresses to checking out the weight of wheat). However, the shape of the container also lets thinking of a mortarium, a domestic mortar, with a pistillum, useful in pork's sausages production. 

This second interpretation lets us associate that stela with the other one of the suarius, considering them different parts of a workshop production, due to the similarities in architectural and stylistic similarities (as the absence of deads' names). Both have to be part of the same funerary monument.

Provenance: Bologna, "Reno's Wall"
Datation: End of 1st century BC- Early 1st century AD
Material: sandstone
Dimensions: height cm 186,5; widht cm 46,5; depth cm 3,4
Bibliography: CIL XI, 6841
Inventory #: 19004