The Tertullus Monument:
A Funerary Monument from Roman Carthage

Marilyn Evans (University of Georgia)

From 1992-1997 the University of Georgia conducted excavations of a Roman cemetery near the probable location of the south gate of ancient Carthage in the modern community of Yasmina.  The Tertullus Monument, the tomb of M. Vibius Tertullus and his family, is one of the most elaborate mausolea from this necropolis.  Constructed in the second century CE, the architecture of the monument belongs to a well-known category of tower tombs, an indigenous style of funerary architecture once common throughout North Africa.  The iconography of the monument, however, draws from a distinctly Roman repertory of funerary art.  In the wide world of pre-Roman and Roman North African funerary art, the architecture and the iconography of the Tertullus Monument indicate that the deceased and his family were prominent and wealthy members of Roman Carthage.  In particular, the image of the lupa from the second story of the tomb, when compared to dedications of lupae in North Africa, suggests that the deceased occupied some municipal office. Epigraphic evidence from the tomb and elsewhere in the cemetery seems to support this.  Moreover, on the first story of the monument, images of a cloaked horseman riding his horse appear to demonstrate the source of their fame and fortune: horse-breeding.  Mosaics elsewhere in North Africa furnish evidence for horse-breeding; the most notable of these are two pavements from the Maison de Sorothus at Sousse (ancient Hadrumetum), which both depict a central pastoral scene flanked by images of circus ponies.  The connection between circus ponies and horse-breeding also finds a parallel with the horsemen on the Tertullus Monument.  A marble tondo found in the 1994 excavation season of the necropolis in a square adjacent to the Tertullus Monument bears the image of a circus pony; the horse is dressed in circus panoply and its left flank is branded with the letters MVF.  The brand may stand for M. V. Filius, which may denote a descendant of the distinguished Tertullus and connect the horse tondo to the Marcus Vibius Tertullus of the eponymous monument.