L'enigma epigrafico di Barbola

In 1878 the front panel of a Roman sarcophagus was found in the basilica of SS. Maria and Donato in Murano. The artefact, which dates to the 3rd century AD, had first been reused as a grave marker in the early Middle Ages and was later turned upside down and employed in the floor of the church, which dates to 1141. The author of the discovery was the abbot Vincenzo Zanetti, director of the Murano City Museum, who first proposed an interpretation for the text that is inscribed in the tabula ansata in the centre of the sarcophagus. Several other exegetical attempts have followed, none of which seems fully convincing. This article offers a different transcription of the epigraphic document, based on a careful autopsy of the text and, especially, on the observation of the relevant role played by the cross that occupies the centre of the artefact. This new reading is confirmed by the contents of the so far unpublished correspondence exchanged between Zanetti and Giovanni Battista de Rossi immediately following the discovery of the sarcophagus, whose full transcription and analysis are given for the first time.