Hic ego qui iaceo: l’incipit dell’‘autoepitaffio di Ovidio’ (Tristia, III, 3, vv. 73-76) in iscrizioni sepolcrali da Tomis e da altri centri della Moesia Inferior

Three inscriptions from Moesia Inferior – one of them exactly from Tomis, the town where Ovid spent in exile the last years of his life – begin with the words Hic ego qui iaceo.We are dealing with the literal quotation of the dactyls opening the metrical epigraph devised by the poet himself to be engraved on his own grave. This confirms that Ovid’s verses memory was still alive in that peripheral area, even at grass-root level, and it is a clear sign of the vitality of his poetry and of his reception throughout the centuries.