Dec. 16, 1887.] a) [King. 
Epitaph of M. Verrius Flaccus. By Rev. 0. W. King, M.A. 
(Read before the American Philosophical Society, December 16, 1887.) 
The collection of antiquities of Count D’Hérisson, the result of long- 
continued excavations. in Apulia and around Carthage, comprised a mar- 
ble slab, described in the sale catalogue as ‘“‘The Epitaph of M. Verrio 
and his brother, Celsus, with two skulls and an axe.’’ But the Count 
could boast of resembling the ‘‘ Divine Williams’’ (as he would call him) 
in one point at least—that ‘‘he had small Latin,’ for the merest novice in 
that language could easily read the inscription as: ‘‘To Marcus Verrius 
Flaccus, son of Marcus, of the Tribe Falerina, his brother Celsus [erected 
this].’’ I subjoin a fac-simile of the epitaph, showing the arrangement 
and relative proportions of the lettering. 
M. VERRIO 
M. 7 Bie eA ds © C0 
CHLSVS.FRATER. 
The inscription is cut in the round, bold character used in the later days 
of the Republic, and which did not outlast-the first century of the Empire. 
The raaterial is a slab (2 ft. 4in. by 1 ft. 6 in.) of the marble of Paros, 
the quarries of Luni (Carrara) were but recently opened when Pliny 
wrote. The back of the slab has been left very uneven and rough, for 
the purpose of taking better hold upon the bedding of mortar by which 
it was inserted in the facade of the tomb, no doubt a brick construction. 
The once-polished surface is much weathered, giving evidence of the 
many centuries for which it had retained its original position (and, proba- 
bly, had witnessed the fall of that Empire with whose birth it was nearly 
coéval) before it was buried in the earth along with the ruins of the monu- 
ment. About a third of the surface shows more corrosion than the rest, 
in consequence of having been covered to this extent by the mortar and 
the rubbish. 
Before attempting to identify the individual thus commemorated, I 
shall remark that the Verria was a plebeian family, and the Yalerina, 
in which it was registered, a rustic tribe. ‘‘Flaccus’’ was the actual 
name of the deceased; for the ‘““Nomen”’ and ‘“Tribus’’ of the Ver- 
rius had been, according to rule, assumed by his father, originally 
a slave, on becoming a freedman of that family. That ‘“Flaccus’’ was 
a@ word of some Jtalic dialect, ‘perhaps Oscan, in which similar forms 
occur, as ‘‘Maccus,’’ etc., and that, with ‘‘ Bassus,’’ ‘‘ Varus,’* and the 
like, it denoted some personal peculiarity in the first who bore it, cannot 
reasonably be doubted, and it may have been synonymous with pen- 
