Marble architrave with inscription

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The inscription, written in Greek and said to be from Rome, is unusual since most large, public inscriptions from Rome are in Latin. It appears to refer to the Statilii, originally an aristocratic family from Lucania in Southern Italy. Two men called Titus Statilius Taurus (father and son) rose to the consulship in the late first century B.C. as supporters of the emperor Augustus. The purpose and sense of this fragmentary inscription remains unclear. As well as a Titus Sta[tilius], it lists two women with Roman names, Cornelia and Octavia, two men with Greek names, Leonides and Apollonios, and another woman, Gessia.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art