base di Cneo Avillio

This is a Roman cippus, a monumental marker, carved from a single block of red Veronese marble. It stands on a cubic base, its south face bearing an inscription that records its consecration to the deified spirit of Augustus. The dedication was made by a member of the local seviri Augustales, a college of freedmen who oversaw the imperial cult.

The stone’s owner was Gnaeus Avillius, son of Quintus. The Avillii family appears in scattered records across the ancient world, from Praeneste to Delos, suggesting a network of commercial interests. In Praeneste itself, the name recurs on funerary cippi from the Colombella necropolis, a burial ground used from the 4th to the 2nd century BC by the town’s mercantile elite.

This modest block, then, is not merely a religious dedication. It is a fragment of a larger social story: of freedmen seeking status, of families spreading across the Mediterranean, and of the quiet, stone-bound records left behind.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.