INTRODUCTION

From a study conducted in 1999 by prof. Alessandro Giuliani and his pupils of the secondary school “F. RUSSO” in Pianura, suburban quarter of Naples, they emerge some inedited and fascinating theses about the two cenotaphs found in Pianura in the XVIII century: according to the first one, both of the Latin epigraphs, probably of the I century A.D. and studied because materially present on that territory, if closely examined can be connected to a same  “GENS MARCIA”. This implies that, in ancient times, in Pianura there was a “Praedium Marcianum”, that is a “MARCIANO FIELD”. Maybe here took “Cupa Marzano”, the present “Via Cintia”.

The research hypothesizes also the identification of this “MARCIANO” with the famous “MARCIANO” with which dealt  Johannowsky too and concerning the “Translatio Sancti Januarii”; the argumentations are presented divided into three theses:

1.   The Marciano in Agnano

2.   The Marciano in “La Cintia”

3.   The Marciano in Pianura.

This study does not want to consider as certainties the expounded theses, but it just wants to put forth new proposals which must be verified and valuated. So we are grateful to anybody who wants to express their own opinion disproving or validating them, but always in a dialectic and scientific way, never a priori.

THE CENOTAPHS

The research started with the study and the interpretation of the two epigraphs of Pianura: intuition and knowledge of the territory allowed the elaboration of the hypotheses.

In the first epigraph of PIANURA, (C. I. L. X. 1884), recovered in Pianura, as confirmed also by Dubois in the work “Pouzzoles antique” page 228, we read:

which we try to translate this way:

FOR - THE - GODS - MANES
TO - TITUS - OF THE - GENS - MARCIA
AVGVSTALE - BUILT
THE - SEPULCHRE - WHEN - STILL - ALIVE - FOR - HIMSELF
AND - FOR - CORNELIA - FROM – ASCANio -
DAUGHTER - OF - HIS OWN - WIFE
AND - FOR - CORNELIA
AGATHONIDE
BINE …      of sMIRNE(?)
WIFE

In the second epigraph of Pianura we read:

FOR - THE - GODS - MANES
TO - SVETTIA - FREEWOMAN - DAUGHTER
OF - VITTORIA
LIVED - XXII - YEARS-III - MONTHS
HER -  SON - MARCIANO
AND - HER - MOTHER - TRYFENA
HEIRS
(Put)

Both the epigraphs are located, still today, the first along the right wall, the second just opposite, along the left wall, at the entrance of the courtyard of palace de’ Grassi, at Corso Duca d’Aosta, in Pianura, west quarter of Naples.

Giuliani assigns to the two inscriptions the same praedium, following up the interpretation of “TMARCIOTAUR” as: “TO TITUS OF THE GENS MARCIA”.

So, as in both the epigraphs, which were found in the same territory of PIANURA, there are references to the GENS MARCIA as owners or imperial functionaries, rightfully we can say that here it existed a “PREADIUM MARCIANVM”, that is an estate, a property or a holding inhabited by the GENS MARCIA, and consequently, that here in Pianura there was a MARCIANO.

prof. Alessandro GIULIANI