Testamentum Dasumii
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The Testamentum Dasumii refers to an inscription in several pieces found in Rome, that bears the only Roman will inscribed on stone. Originally presenting the complete will, while the surviving pieces of the inscription include parts of all 133 lines, much of the beginning and ends of all of the lines are missing. Nevertheless, it is of great value for prosopographic reasons, as well as an example of a Roman legal document for which otherwise there are few examples.
Pieces of this inscription were first found in 1820, containing lines 1-56 and more were identified in 1830, containing lines 57-133. Theodor Mommsen reconstructed this document for publication in the series Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum,[1] which was considered as faithful as possible until the recovery of a further piece by Antonio Ferrua in the 1970s, which added to the first 19 lines of the inscription.[2] This new fragment proved Mommsen's restorations of those lines as inaccurate, and brought into question his restoration of the rest of the inscription. Since then, Werner Eck has offered a new restoration of those lines based on Ferrua's discovery, which while commonly accepted is still considered tentative.[3]
The inscription is dated to the consulate of Publius Aelius Hadrianus and Marcus Trebatius Priscus, or the summer of 108.