A poem by Virgil on a Roman amphora

It measures just 6 centimeters wide and 8 centimeters long, but the magnitude and exceptionality of its find surprised the European archaeological community. It’s a fragment of a oil amphora by Roman Baetica made about 1800 years ago with a written text.

The object was found during surveys carried out around the municipality of Hornachuelos, in Cordoba, by members of the OLEASTRO project from the Universities of Córdoba, Seville and Montpellier. So far nothing new.

There are billions of pieces of pottery from Ancient Rome. Rome’s Monte Testaccio alone is an endless source of information about the Roman oil and wine industry.

In fact, at first, the research team was not particularly surprised to receive the fragment from the hand of Francisco Adame, resident of the village of Ochavillo, the first person to notice that Roman piece when he was walking through the area of ​​the Tamujar stream, in an area very close to the village of Villalón (in Fuente Palmera).

The researchers were not surprised because the fact that they appeared words printed on amphoras. In fact, it was the data printed on the amphoras (producers, quantities, control…) that allowed archeology to reconstruct the history of agricultural trade in the Empire.

It was not uncommon to find a piece of amphora in an area like plain of the Guadalquivir river, considered one of the nerve centers of olive oil production and marketing throughout the Empire. On the outskirts of Córduba, present-day Córdoba, much of the oil consumed by Rome was produced and bottled, as attested, for example, by the remains of amphoras with the Bético seal preserved on Monte Testaccio.

Fragment of the oil amphora found in Roman Baetica, manufactured approximately 1800 years ago. / OCU

Thus, a piece of amphora with printed letters seemed, at first, just another piece, of no particular notable interest. Everything changes when that one is deciphered epigraphyin which the following fragments of letters and words are read:

Yes
you are going
Avoniam
glans m
edge, small
You are here
Item

Investigators discovered that they were fragments of the seventh and eighth verses of the first book of the georgicsThe Poem by Virgil dedicated to agriculture and country life written in 29 BC, which reads:

Auoniam(penguin)
glans m (utauit)
edge, poq(ulaque)
(inuen)tis Aqu(eloia)
(miscu) it (uuis)

C(changed) the aonia acorn to the (fertile) ear (and mixed) or
el ag(ua) (with the grape uncovered)

Virgil was the most popular poet of his time and for many centuries after. O Aeneid was taught in schools and its verses were usually written as pedagogical exercise for many generations.

That is why it is common to find them in the remains of ceramic building materials and that is why many authors have given these tablets educational functions —The Roman students wrote Virgil on their blackboards— and funerary (this author’s verses served as an epitaph on many occasions), but why on an amphora? and why the Georgia and not the Aeneid?

That’s when scientists realized that that tiny piece of pottery could be a truly unique piece of extraordinary value, as Virgil’s verses were never documented in an amphora destined for the oil trade.

The main thesis of the authors of the workpublished in Journal of Roman Archeology from the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), is that those verses were written in the lower part of the amphora without the intention that anyone would notice them, just as a sample of the knowledge and culture of the person who wrote them, which shows a certain degree of literacy in a rural area like this area of ​​the Guadalquivir valley.

And who was the person who did this? Here, the authors raise several possibilities: that it is a specialized worker from the establishment with a certain degree of literacy or people from nearby villages related to an aristocratic family that owns the industry.

In addition, they leave open the possibility that a child worker, whose usual existence in this type of establishment has been previously documented, does so.

In any case, the verses of the amphora Hornachuelos and Fuente Palmera constitute a unique piece with many more questions to answer.