Prosopografia e produzione ceramica: i Murrii

Abstract

Prosopography and pottery production: the Murrii
‘Terra sigillata’ production has a very great economic importance, involving a high number of potters; Murrii’s activity begins in the Augustan age and extends for a long time, as we can determine from numerous pottery stamps, attested until the middle of second century AD. It was a gens with a conservative frame of mind and attached to land property; the origin of their fortune probably dates back to the Sillan age, as high number of toponyms referring to their name seems to suggest. During the first imperial age they stood far from political activities and confined themselves to a local sphere. However, the economical activity of the Murrii is attested by Pisa’s figlinae and by links with professional collegia. From the middle of the first century, Pisa’s potters took part in the diffusion of ‘terra sigillata tardoitalica’ and the offsprings of the freedmen of this family are likely to have served in legionary units of the Flavian age. Members of the gens are testified in Rome and in Italy until the fourth century AD.
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