A Second-Century Christian Inscription from the Via Latina

This article treats an early Christian inscription held in the Capitoline Museum known as NCE 156. Existing arguments for an Antonine date (138-192 C.E.) are reconsidered and strengthened. Earlier studies of the inscription have convincingly demonstrated its Christian character and this paper extends that discussion still further. However, arguments for the Christian character of the inscription have elided its debt to an established body of Hellenistic funeral poetry. An ancient reader would surely have sensed connections between this inscription and the extensive corpus of epigrams in which the language of marriage and death are intertwined. Given this literary context, NCE 156 should probably be understood as a funerary epigram for a Valentinian Christian, not as a baptismal inscription. But if the Antonine date is accepted, NCE 156 is one of the very oldest Christian material artifacts, older even than the Abercius inscription.