ʻEques super ripam danuvii’ – Notes on CIL III 3676

Abstract

In his paper the author deals with the famous verse inscription CIL III 3676 that described an event in Pannonia in 118 AD during Emperor Hadrian’s visit. Based on the thorough examination of the very long manuscript tradition of the text the lost epitaph was most probably erected in/or around Rome and never belonged to Pannonian inscriptions. It seems there was an earlier unknown Italian and British line of the tradition but the archetypus (x) remains unknown. The author also intends to point out that the Batavian rider cannot surely be called Soranus. This adjective refers rather to the findspot, Sora near Rome. The question of the rider’s name und his unit must remain unsolved. The poem was attributed to Emperor Hadrian latest from the Late Antiquity.