From the year the City was pickled.. er um…. founded

In the grand Church of St. Augustine here in Roma, the attentive visitor will notice and read the inscription on the tomb of Onofrio Panvinio (1529 Verona – 1568 Palermo), Augustinian and scholar, admire (?) his countenance, and say a prayer for the repose of his soul.  He is the author of such page turners as the 1557 work Fasti et triumphi Rom. a Romulo rege vsque ad Carolum V. Caes. Aug.:Sive epitome regum, consulum, dictatorum, magistror. equitum, tribunorum militum consulari potestate, censorum, impp. & aliorum magistratuum Roman. cum orientalium tum occidentalium, ex antiquitatum monumentis maxima cum fide ac diligentia desumpta.

In any event, it seems that this is the fellow who worked out the date of the founding of Rome, the dates we often see with the abbreviation A.U.C. (Ab Urbe Condita).  As you know that condita comes from condo condere cónditum and not condio condire condítum.  If not, we would be saying “From the (year) the City was pickled” rather than “From the (year) the City was founded”.  Yep, in Latin it is good to get the accents right.

Here is his monument inscription.  Go ahead and take a crack at it!

Here is an interesting footnote.  Today is the feast of St. Aurea, a martyr in Ostia in the 2nd century.  On the edge of the ruins of Ostia Antica, ancient Rome’s port, there is a little church dedicated to her.  It was there some children after WWII found the inscription stone of the burial place of St. Monnica, the mother of St. Augustine of Hippo, who died in Ostia when they were on their way back to N. Africa after Augustine’s baptism.  (I wrote about this in an article for Inside The Vatican last year.)  St. Monnica’s body is to be found now in the Church of St. Augustine in Rome, after it was transferred from the Church of St. Aurea in Ostia, in turned translated there from her original burial place.  Full circle!  Right?   And so we have deeper meaning to what Monnica, who had several last resting places, said before she died.