«Sepolte vive»: iscrizioni nascoste e ritornate alla luce. Tre casi da Verona

The inscriptions are «lapides loquentes», that can transmit not only important informations, but also feelings and emotions, as if they were «alive». I was always deeply affected by the fact that the inscriptions are too often put in a position to no longer be able to communicate their message, and so, they are, in fact or metaphorically, «buried alive». Many inscriptions have disappeared, buried, already in ancient and late antique times, but there are also examples for the modern and contemporary ages, in the foundations of walls or buildings or in pillars of bridges or they are victim of natural phenomena or war episodes. Even more serious, then, is the fact that many inscriptions are not buried materially, but are in various ways hidden from the scholar’s view. In this paper I will present three study cases related to inscriptions that mention a sexvir Augustalis, an eques and a fictor pontificum.