A small stone post or pillar used in ancient times as a boundary marker, grave marker, or commemorative monument.
From Latin cippus, a term for a small stone shaft or post. Common throughout the Roman Empire for marking graves, boundaries, and significant locations. Related to the verb cipere, meaning to carve or cut.
Archaeological digs across the Roman Empire unearth thousands of cippi, and because they're often inscribed with names and dates, they're like a distributed database of the ancient world—telling us who lived where, how long they lived, and what they valued.
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