Quintius Lutatius Longinus and his wife Lunia in a funerary inscription from Gozo

Abstract

A marble funerary inscription 1 of the Roman period is recorded by A.A. Caruana to have been discovered in Gozo in the district known as It-Tomba, in Victoria ; the place-name itself also denotes a funerary context: Tomba - in Italian- meaning a tomb. In Caruana' s times, this sepulchral inscription was kept at the Augustinians.' friary in Valletta where it was brought from the friary of the Augustinian fathers in Rabat (Malta) to whom it had been earlier presented. But, on contacting the Augustinian fathers of Valletta, the present writer was informed that no inscription of the sort exists at present in their friary and that, if it was ever kept there, it must have been probably lost when the friary was hit during the Second World War. The inscription throws some light on the social status of this couple living in Gozo evidently before the 3rd century A.D.