A Roman Marble Cinerary Urn with Lid, circa A.D. 40-70

of semicircular form, the front carved within a cable border with an inscribed panel framed by a scrolling ivy vine emerging from a gadrooned krater below, two birds perched on tendrils on either side of the vessel, the recessed panel engraved within a molded frame with four lines of Latin inscription translating "To the spirits of the dead of Claudius Terentius; Atilia Postumilla made this for her son," a hole in each corner, the lid's pediment adorned with palmette-shaped corner acroteria and carved in front with two birds flanking a fruit basket, the top of the lid slightly convex and decorated with a pattern of overlapping echeloned scales; mortises on each side of the urn and lid for the missing lead clamps.

found in or near Rome prior to 1915
Dr. Ludwig Pollak (1868-1943)
Louise Ehrman Thorne (1872-1955), Winnetka, Chicago, and Boston, probably acquired in the 1930s
Frances Thorne Horne (1904-1992), Barrington, Illinois
by descent to the present owners

Martin Bang, ed., Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL), vol. VI, Roma, pars quarta, fasciculus postremus, Berlin, 1933, no. 38191 (for the inscription)
Friederike Sinn, Statdrömische Marmorurnen, Mainz am Rhein, 1987, p. 127, no. 136 (as "Claudian-Neronian")

The inscription on this urn was published (after a squeeze provided by L. Pollak) in a volume of CIL which, according to its preface, includes only inscriptions found in and around Rome up until 1915. There is a photograph of the urn in the visual archives of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, negative no. 2926.