Sarcophagus of Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, early to mid 3rd cent. B.C., Tuff
The Vatican Museums, Rome
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Unknown Sarcophagus of Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, early to mid 3rd cent. B.C., Tuff The Vatican Museums, Rome As we move into the 3rd century BCE we turn briefly from Greece to Italy, where Rome was engaged in the third of a series of Samnite Wars (we saw the First Samnite War possibly depicted in no. 37 of this series). This sarcophagus, or coffin, belonged – as the inscription tells us – to Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, who held the shared post of head of the Roman state ("consul") in 298 BCE. During the third of the Samnite Wars, fought between Rome and neighbouring populations in Italy, Scipio Barbatus led the Roman troops to victory against the Etruscans (whose funerary urns and sarcophagi we saw earlier in the series) at Volterra. Scipio Barbatus stands at the beginning of what would be a century of Roman conquest across the Mediterranean, building the foundations of the vast Roman empire.
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AuthorEmily Hauser is a classicist and researcher at Harvard and author of historical fiction recovering the lost women of the ancient world, including FOR THE MOST BEAUTIFUL and FOR THE WINNER. Archives
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