Foreigners from Eastern Mediterranean at Ostia, Portus and Puteoli in the imperial period. A reconsideration of the matter through the analysis of funerary inscriptions

Funerary inscriptions may offer a very important insight in the main activities undertaken by the deceased during their life and in a few cases they can also reveal their origins. Even if with caution, mostly because of the difficulty of considering the remaining epigraphic documents as really representative of the actual social situation, we can consider the funerary sphere as a substantial image of the various different people and cultures living and meeting each other in the harbour cities. In this paper I will try to attempt a reanalysis of the information deriving from Latin and Greek funerary inscriptions of three main harbour-cities of central Italy: Ostia, Portus and Puteoli; comparisons will be made also with other harbours in the Italian peninsula. Through the analysis of the deathscape of these cities it will be possible to reconstruct, even if partially, the origins and mobility of foreigners, with a particular attention to those coming from the Eastern Mediterranean provinces. As far as it results from the available epigraphic texts (mostly those in Greek) we can see that cultural and social diversity was a peculiar feature of the analysed harbour cities, even if not very often the deceased decided to record on his tombstone his far origins. In fact, apart from onomastics which is not a truly reliable clue in order to understand the geographic origin of a person, only in a few cases the deceased declares its provenance so that we can be sure of his actual homeland. In Portus a considerable number of people from Nikomedeia in Bithynia are mentioned, being quite certainly involved in marble trade; but there were also merchants (possibly of wheat?) from Alexandreia in Egypt. In Puteoli at least four inscriptions are related to naukleroi from Korykos in Cilicia, but we also know some naukleroi from Tyros and a man from Nikomedeia. As far as we can understand from this scanty data, sailors and traders are mainly concerned, which is not a surprise for the social composition of harbour cities. Therefore, even if not very numerous, the epigraphic texts analysed may offer a good picture of the demographic composition and the general social and cultural background of these centres.