Sepolcro di Priscilla

Priscilla was the wife of Titus Flavius Abascantus, a freedman of Domitian and his secretary ab epistulis, and the tomb is identified from Statius, Silvae V, the Epicedion in Priscillam Abascanti Uxorem, which records that she was embalmed rather than cremated. In 1773 a marble slab was found beside the mausoleum, set up for the young slave Aphrodisius by T. Flavius Epaphroditus, custodian of the tomb for Abascantus and Priscilla; it reached the civic lapidary collection of Ferrara in 1779, by gift of Cardinal Gian Maria Riminaldi. From the eleventh century the monument was reused as a fortification, a cylindrical tower called the torre Petro being built on the upper drum; it was held by the counts of Tusculum and then by the Caetani. In the eighteenth century it was wrongly believed to be the tomb of the Scipios, and Piranesi drew it. Two farmhouses were later built against it, one of them the osteria dell'Acquataccio, and the burial chamber was used to age cheese.