LAOCOÖN

Perhaps the most famous tombstone in the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli is that of Felice Fredi, who died in 1529 (Latin Inscriptions of Rome, 1.8E). The stone is mounted low in the wall by the steps at the head of the left aisle. In his epitaph, Fredi’s personal qualities are eclipsed by the memory of a discovery made on a piece of property that he owned on the Oppian Hill: on 14 January 1506, the celebrated sculptural group representing Laocoön and his sons came to light in Fredi’s vineyard, which lay on the site of the Baths of Titus and (beneath that) a pavilion of Nero’s Golden House. The relevant lines of the epitaph read: FELICI DE FREDIS QVI OB PROPRIAS VIRTVTES ET REPERTVM LACOOHONTIS DIVINVM QVOD IN VATICANO CERNIS FERE RESPIRAN(s) SIMVLACR(um) IM(mo)RTALITATEM MERVIT (‘to Felice Fredi, who earned immortality both for his own merits and for the discovery of the divine, well-nigh breathing effigy of Laocoön that you behold in the Vatican’).

The form LACOOHONTIS is perplexing. In classical Latin, it would be Laocoontis (five syllables, with the accent on the penultimate: La-o-co-ON-tis). Another odd feature is the abbreviation of anno domini as ANN DII at the end of the epitaph; the form DII appears to be unparalleled in the abbreviations of the period. The explanation of these peculiarities came to light in a piece of scholarship published by Ivan di Stefano Manzella after I had finished my own research on the inscriptions of Aracoeli (‘Il ricordo del divinum spirans simulacrum nell’epitaffio di Felice de Fredis, “scopritore” del Laocoonte’, in Laocoonte: Alle origini dei musei Vaticani, 2006).

On the basis of transcriptions of the epitaph made before the nineteenth century, Manzella demonstrates not only that the existing epitaph is a copy but also that its text deviates in many details from that of the original. In particular, the oldest known transcription of the epitaph, which dates to the sixteenth century, features the readings LAOCOHONTIS and DNI. Although the form Laocohontis is not classical, it is predictable: in medieval Latin, H was often inserted between two adjacent vowels in hiatus (i.e., not forming a diphthong). Similarly, the abbreviation DNI is just what one would expect in a text of this period.

How did Fredi’s epitaph come to be replaced by a copy? The clue is inscribed on a stone set into the pavement before the Chapel of St. Helen, not far from the present location of Fredi's tomb slab: SEPOLTVRA DI FELICE DE FREDIS C(arolus) L(udovicus) FREDI DE COVBERTIN INST(auravit) ANNO MDCCCLVI (‘The grave of Felice Fredi. Charles-Louis de Frédy de Coubertin restored it in the year 1856’). Charles-Louis de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin, was the scion of a French branch of the family Fredi (his son, Pierre de Frédy de Coubertin, was the founder of the International Olympic Committee). In 1856, de Frédy came to Rome and had his kinsman’s tombstone removed from the floor and mounted in the wall, presumably to end the wear and tear that had already rendered it virtually illegible. De Frédy’s activity amounted to more than a simple transfer: because the epitaph was so worn, he evidently had it recut in litura – that is, the trace of the original inscription was polished away and a new text inscribed on the resulting surface. In addition to the deviations from the text as known from transcriptions, the slightly concave profile of the stone and the unnaturally pristine condition of the lettering are tell-tale signs that Fredi’s epitaph is a copy. Caveat lector!