SIT TIBI TERRA LEVIS VALERIO

Fleeing from the electoral zarabandas, they make a lot of noise, I go to Cangas de Onís and in Moracal I look for the cipo that Professor Camón Aznar, an Aragonese lover of Asturias like me, spoke to us about in one of his master classes. He had a big house in San Martín de Luiña; behind the fence there is a fir tree, I would say more like a grecal tree, which is the tree of eternity of Israel. I look for the cipo or cinerary stele that we studied in art history, it has rained a lot up to this date, near the Roman bridge. The wonderful epigraph for its suggestive succession of days and the life that ends is a tribute to a soldier or perhaps a merchant who passed away two thousand years ago and it says: VALERIUS LUCIUS POSTUMUS LIVED 50 YEARS. AND HE IS HERE. ERA UXAMENSIS (Burgo de Osma, the land of Jesús Gil) MAY THE EARTH BE LIGHT TO YOU.

This is the translation that Camón made for us because the Latin epigraph was much more succinct and in abbreviation: “Valerius Lucius Postumus VIXIT ANNNOS L. HIC EST S. T.T. L.

This funerary stele from CANGAS, under whose steep bridge arcade two things are hidden, tells us: 1) the brevity of life and 2) the desire for immortality stamped in the phrase “may the earth be light to you”.

Rome in its paganism believed in the immortality of souls and took refuge in the mercy of the gods who reside in the celestial Olympus and watch over and protect the human being.

In Llenin and discovered by Don Antonio Cortés there is another milestone in memory of another deceased person of whom Frasinelli, that German who spoke and speculated so much about Asturias, tells us. The tombstone is more blurred, showing the ravages of the two millennia since it was sculpted. It warns:

“This monument was built by Valeria Donata vadiniensis (vadinensis from vadum river is a hydronym, that is, the Sella) in memory of her husband from the house of the Flavians. He lived 50 years and died in the year 300 of the consulate and was a slave of Lucius Carpetus. May the earth be light to you.” This Flavia lived in Llenin next to the Sella river, that is, she lived in Vadinum, which is what the Romans called Llenin.

Other literary landmarks that refer to the importance that Asturica had for the Roman world can be compared with the one that appeared in Astorga, dedicated to Flavinian Carpetus, who died at the age of thirteen. It is more direct and endearing. Its reading: “Walker, I beg you that when you pass by here you remember that here lies Bebio Latro son of Rufino Ibarra, who died at the age of thirteen… may the earth be light on him.

This was the formula with which our ancestors pronounced requiems on the stones of the road in memory of their deceased.