Arve and welcome to Emperors of Rome, a Roman history podcast from La Trobe University.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is Riannon Evans, Associate Professor in Classics and Ancient History at La Trobe University.

This is episode CCXLVI, Laudati Oteria.

In times of antiquity, along the Via Appia, stood the Laudati Oteria, a funerary inscription

praising the life of an exceptional Roman woman.

While we aren't sure of her actual identity, her husband was clearly

fond of her and wanted everyone approaching Rome to know it. Here's Riannon Evans.

The Via Appier in Rome, or leading out of Rome, is the location for most of the funerary

monuments that we know of from Rome because technically everyone was

meant to be buried outside the city. And this is the source of a lot of our funerary

inscriptions from Rome because of that. Now, if I said to you, who has the longest funerary

inscription of anybody from Rome? I know you know the answer, but what would be your guess if you didn't know the answer?

If I didn't know the answer, the rest guest I.

Ah, yes, which is not outside of Rome.

You didn't say outside of Rome when you asked me that question, so I got you on a technicality.

You did. You did.

So Augustus is, I guess it's a funerary inscription. It's outside

whose more salium. But the longest one on the Via Appia is not any famous Roman politician,

emperor, not even a bloke. It's the inscription of a Republican woman who is generally known as Turia, but we'll talk about

whether she was Turia or not in a moment, because even though this is a very lengthy inscription

on two separate slabs of stone, and it's fragmentary, so it was even longer, we don't know her

name. Her name doesn't appear.

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