Terracotta tile with footprints, c. 100 BCE, Terracotta
0.67 x 0.94m
Image from Imagines Italicae; drawing by Glynnis Fawkes (after Wallace-Hadrill 2008b, fig. 3.5)
hn. sattiieis. detfri segnatted. plavtad herennis. amica signauit. qando. a- ponebamus. tegila(m) Detfri of Hn. Sattis signed with a footprint. Amica of Herens signed when we were laying out the tile. |
"The footprints function as signatures of a sort, but they also show something that is otherwise unrecorded, and largely unrecordable, in the remains of Roman cities – the literal footprints of individual slaves ... It is as if the footprints tactically claim a trace of existing, or better yet walking, a trace otherwise largely unrecognized in ancient and modern accounts of life in the city and on its streets." |