Lescho

Wolański attributed this to a present by the Emperor Tiberius to Lech the eponymous founder of the Lechs, that is Poles. The above is a funerary inscription that Wolański got, as he himself said, from Raphael Fabretti’s 1699 Inscriptionum Antiquarum. 

This marble inscription is featured among the various Italian inscriptions and described here.  It is not a description of any imperial gift.  It was recovered from a local (?) cemetery at Urbino in 1686 and is interpreted as follows:

C(AIO) AVILLIO LESCHO
TI(BERIVS) CLAVDIVS BVCCIO
COLVMBARIA IIII OLL(AS) VIII SE VIVO A SOLO AD
FASTIGIVM MANCIPIO
DEDIT

It is also featured in Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL VI, 12905):

It is housed in the museum of the Ducal Palace in Urbino – just southeast of San Marino.  The inscription has been dated to the 1st century A.D. and refers to a transfer of a burial plot by Tiberius Claudius Buccio to Gaius Avillius Lescho (or Caius, if you will).

Avillius is not an unheard of name in Rome.  Thus, for example, we have a bridge inscription from about 3 A.D on the Pont d’Aël bridge/aqueduct in Aymavilles in Aosta Valley, north-western Italy:

 IMP CAESARE AVGVSTO XIII COS DESIG
C AVILLIVS C F CAIMVS PATAVINVS
PRIVATVM

Which, actually, is an “imperial reference” to the times of Augustus and the builder of the bridge/acqueduct, one, Gaius Avillius Caimus from Padua, son of Gaius (or Caius, if you will).

So was Wolański just plain crazy?  It seems this is a case of trying to make too great and ambitious a claim where a much smaller one would have, perhaps, done the trick.

Thus, for example, we can certainly ask a question that is much more interesting than any “imperial” claims:

While Buccio is a common name from the Emilia-Romagna (though it, too, is interesting), what kind of name is Lescho?

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