Abstract

The note reinterprets an important epigraphic testimony of the Ostrogoth age, published for the first time by Giovanni Battista de Rossi in 1894. It is a polymetric funeral eulogy commissioned among the Amali royal family, perhaps dedicated by Flavia Amala Amalafrida Theodenanda to one or more relatives, unless one wishes to identify her with one of the dedicatees of the eulogy. After a presentation of supportive material and a new edition of the text, the history of the discovery of the inscription is retraced, involving leading figures of the 19th century political and ecclesiastical culture including cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli and H. Stevenson Jr., a pupil of de Rossi. The contribution dates the artifact between the end of the 5th century and the beginning of the 6th; it studies the hypothesis of identifying Amalafrida with one of the princesses in the family circle of King Theodoric and with the Ostrogothic wife of Flavius Maximus; it illustrates a hypothesis of the intended use of the epigraph for a funeral monument in the cemetery area of the Martyrial Basilica of S. Secondino on the Praenestina.