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[commentary by Vojin Nedeljković:] The fragments were spotted early in the 20th century within the structure of a wall in the fortress of Niš, where they had been reused as building blocks: they stood ‘not far away from one another’, with the lettering ‘considerably blotted out by age’ (Vulić). Already bad enough, this condition later deteriorated so much that in 1979 Petrović was unable to revise the inscription or even detect either of the fragments, and could do no better than reproduce Vulić’s facsimile, which now seems to be the only record of the text to work with. The first, and most obvious, observation is that IMS 4.39 is a funerary inscription whose dedicatee, by the name of Aurelius Bantio (or Bantius, or Banus), died a young man—cf. B1 iuvenci, B2 iuvenis, with further details implying an early death: A3 miserand[ ‘poor’, ‘deplorable’; A5, where Vulić supplied ere]ptus ‘snatched away’ and also thought of perem]ptus or interem]ptus ‘perished’. The mention of a ‘spouse’ late in the text, B7 c]oniux, makes it fairly certain that the deceased had a wife, who seems to be the dedicator, or one of the dedicators, of the inscription. At A2 Vulić proposed in]nocuus; we may supply in]nocuus vi[xit (or vi[xi), in view of a number of funerary texts in which the phrase innocuum vivere is used to evoke an untimely death. The epitaphs typically ascribe ‘innocuousness’ (rather than ‘innocence’) to those who count as feeble or frail—not only women but also males who die before reaching their prime. A further inference, based on B4 pessimam ge[ntem ‘scoundrels’ and B6 gentis periura ‘the treachery of these people’, would be that Aurelius Bantio died violently. Funerary texts often speak of death by the hand of latrones, and although our fragments offer no explicit mention of a similar case, the scenario is fairly probable in view of parallels such as CLE 174 (on the grave of a fifteen-year-old) cot (i.e. quod) debuit facere filius, scelesta gens fecit ut hoc faceret pater. The words gentis periura replicate a poetic phrase coined by Vergil and copied by others. The possibility of supplying de]cepta at B1 further enhances the picture of a young man murdered by bandits: Aurelius Bantio may in fact have been deceptus a latronibus. In the epitaphs deceptus often means ‘frustrated by fate’ and is particularly salient in a number of inscriptions which tell us of people being ‘deceived by bandits’, i.e. killed by them in a brutal and/or cowardly manner. At several points our fragments exhibit traces of dactylic metre: A2 in]nocuus vi[xit _ ̮ ̮ _ _ _ , A3 miserand[ ̮ ̮ _ , B1 de]cepta iuvenci _ _ ̮ ̮ _ _ , B2 iuvenis qui ̮ ̮ _ _ , B6 g]entis periur(i)a _ _ _ _ ̮ ̮ . This certainly looks like fragments of verse, but the poor state of the text makes it uncertain whether the inscription was intended as a proper carmen sepulcrale or just a commaticum. A closer examination of the facsimile reveals that the words in]nocuus at A2 and gent]em at B4, as supplied by Vulić, can actually be read almost in their entirety if the two fragments are drawn close together, with Fragment B on the left-hand side of the picture. [..de]cepta iuvencl[i - The lost beginning of the inscription appears to have contained some conventional opening, e.g. hunc titulum posui (or feci, or posuit/fecit) mater (or genetrix) de]cepta iuvencli. However, the mention of a dedicator, though possible, should not be considered necessary at this point, seeing that the dedicators do appear later in the text. On the other hand, the general picture of a young man killed by bandits emerges more clearly if we persist in taking decepta to refer to the deceased, in which case virtus de]cepta iuvencl[i would be a possibility. 3-4 qui … vi[x(it) a(nnos) X]X dilectus - Based on our previous assumptions, twenty years of age is just about what we may expect for the deceased. The predicative use of dilectus in such contexts is well attested in Roman epitaphs, cf. e.g. CLE 1987 vixit dilecta marito. 5 a] pessimam gentem… per[em]ptus: The accusative after ab is a well-attested feature of Vulgar Latin. The occurrence of gens ‘men, people’ is noteworthy, as instances of such use are not very frequent before Early Medieval Latin. Peremptus typically describes a sudden and violent death. 5-6 qui[etus] dum restaret Initially, the incident that led to the death of Aurelius Bantio may have resembled the typical encounter with street robbers as described by Juvenal: Stat contra starique iubet… ‘he stands in front of you and tells you to freeze’, with the victim seemingly trying to handle the situation with as much common sense as he could gather. Quietus is the key word—on the one hand it means ‘(one who remains) aside of the fight’, ‘not taking part (in a violent conflict)’; on the other, quietus is the ‘peaceful citizen’, warmly praised and fundamentally helpless as the species usually is. 6-9 neque] gentis periura penam, nec eflict[a c]oniux neque amici, quantum [n]efas vider[e paren]tes Apparently periura is vulgar for periuria ‘treachery’. The long sentence that began in line 3 now develops into an anacoluthon: qui… peremptus… nefas videre parentes; it should have been quo perempto. Of the three final segments (neque—penam, nec—amici, quantum—parentes), the first and the last connect rather smoothly: neque gentis periuria (vidit) (tantam) poenam… quantum nefas videre parentes; the double brachylogy does not really obscure the sense. The second segment, however, hardly fits into the sentence: “neither those people’s treachery (ever saw) (that great) a punishment, nor his distressed wife and friends, as great is the wrong that his parents saw done to them”. Indeed this looks like the result of an afterthought—as if the text had originally been written on behalf of the sole parents of the deceased: it is only later that it was expanded to include a mention of his widowed wife and his friends, but even this was done sparingly, so that, instead of recasting the sentence, a few words were burdened with too much to say. At any rate, it was insisted that neither the punishment of the perpetrators nor the painful experience of the victim’s wife or friends could ever equal his parents’ agony. There is a zeugma on penam: the perpetrators’ poena is their ‘punishment’, while the poena experienced by the survivors of the attack is the ‘pain’, the ‘maltreatment’ they suffered. We have already seen that IMS 4.39 contains fragments of verse, but the list needs revision now. The text as we read it exhibits three hexameter endings: decepta iuvencli (line 1), gentis periuria poenam (6), nefas videre parentes (8). Peremptus (5) may be another hexameter ending, and further dactylic sequences are found in qui innocuus vixit (2-3) and qui miserandus (3-4). Without being a proper carmen, then, IMS 4.39 certainly qualifies as a commaticum. Fragments of verse that are characteristic of this type of inscription are principally due to the fact that many writers of funerary texts relied on expressions and phrases borrowed from both verse inscriptions and high poetry—which is why the presence of verse fragments in an epigraphic text does not prove that a verse inscription was intended. But in this case there is something more. The analysis of the final section of IMS 4.39 led us to the assumption that there had been a version prior to what became the final text. Another similar clue is maybe found in lines 1-2, where iuvencli is immediately taken up by Aureli Bantionis iuvenis. It looks as if the original impersonal expression (‘a youngster’) was subsequently personalized by the addition of a phrase which had better been substituted for it (‘the young Aurelius Bantio’). These two instances of later intervention into the text, together with the relatively many fragments of verse, shed a new light on IMS 4.39. If there was a text prior to the one we read, was it a carmen? This question leads us to view the inscription as a possible case of multiple redaction. However, even if we assume that the actual text was produced by disfiguring an original carmen, we cannot hope to restore this carmen in any detail. It may have been restrained, as good funerary poetry often is; it may have produced a stylish picture of someone’s brutality and someone’s grief. But what the dedicators wanted instead was their own sad story told in a few words, and as they struggled their way from the impersonal to the intimate, the carmen they were tampering with ended up shattered like a mirror. [..de]cepta iuvencl[i - The lost beginning of the inscription appears to have contained some conventional opening, e.g. hunc titulum posui (or feci, or posuit/fecit) mater (or genetrix) de]cepta iuvencli. However, the mention of a dedicator, though possible, should not be considered necessary at this point, seeing that the dedicators do appear later in the text. On the other hand, the general picture of a young man killed by bandits emerges more clearly if we persist in taking decepta to refer to the deceased, in which case virtus de]cepta iuvencl[i would be a possibility.