event as well as anything else. And we again see that very well here.
One very interesting fact is that the frieze is not made out of travertine,
but out of pentelic marble, pentelic.
Pentelic marble is marble from Mount Pentelikon in Greece.
So it tells us that marble was imported from Greece or
marble that was imported from Greece was purchased
and used for the frieze of this particular structure.
And we'll see that it was used also for the inscription plaque.
So it tells us something.
It tells us that there was, that some patrons made the decision to spend a
little more for the material for what they
considered the most important part of the monument.
So in this case, the most important
part of the monument was the freeze.
And also the inscription plaque that preserved this woman's name for posterity.
So they paid a little bit more in order to get that
more expensive material for the critical, those critical details of the monument.
Here is the inscription.
We are very fortunate that it's still preserved today.
We see it still inserted into the monument again.
It's done in pentelic marble.
And I think you can see, even in this view the difference between pentelic
marble, and and traverti-, travertine. Travertine is more
texture to it than the, the plainer marble as you can see.
And her name was given here, Caecilia
Metella, Cecilia Metella, and Cecilia Metella down here.
And it
tells us that she was the daughter F, Filia, the daughter of Quinitas Q.
Creticus. Creticus, who may have come from Crete.
It's possible.
And it, it also makes reference to the fact that
she was married to someone by the name of Crassus.
This may be Crassus the Elder; we're not
absolutely sure.
But it, what it does indicate to us is this is an aristocratic woman.
This is an aristocratic woman whose family has a great deal of money,
who are honoring her with this tomb, in the mode of the day.
Which of course was the the, the tomb type that was chosen by Augustus himself.
You may have noticed up here in this same
detail, not only the frieze that we've already described with
the garlands and bucrania, but that there is
a relief here that represents a Roman trophy.
What is a Roman trophy?
A Roman trophy what, what the Romans did at the end of battle,
if they were victorious, is they went over to the nearest tree trunk on
the battlefield, and they took arms and armor from their defeated enemy,
and they tacked that arms and armor up on that tree trunk to create a military
trophy commemorating their victory right on the battlefield.
And that's exactly what you see here.
A tree trunk with a breastplate and a helmet and
shields and so on, all tacked up to that trophy.
So, we have to ask ourselves, what is that trophy doing on this particular monument?
It's highly unlikely that it refers to, there are, there are some instances.
well, we do, do hear about
women trying to raise troops, raise money for the troops and so on and
so forth, but we don't and, and even of, thinking that they might go into
battle, but for the most part, Roman women did not participate in battle, so
it is highly unlikely that this refers to a military en-, encounter that she had.
More likely it either refers to a military encounter of her
father or her husband, or it may be a more generic
reference to victory.
We've talked about the fact in the minds of the Romans the victory in battle,
victory in hunt, in the hunt often were conflated with victory over death.
So it could be a more generic reference, but I would guess it may have something to
do, more specifically with the conquest of her husband or her father.
