Aurelia Nais

The grave monument commemorating Aurelia Nais. Expanding the traditional abbreviations and inserting a slash where the wreath breaks the lines, it reads: Aurelia Nais, also known as just Nais, was a Roman piscatrix, or fish-seller, known from a tombstone or cinerary altar dated to the 3rd C. AD. Most Roman epitaphs do not give women's occupations, describing only their familial relationships, so her short inscription provides an unusual amount of information on an ordinary Roman woman.

Aurelia worked in or near the warehouses called the Horrea Galbae (singular would be horreum ), selling fish. has been taken to suggest that Nais worked in the area for a prolonged time, and was not a traveling merchant.

The warehouses were named the Horrea Galbae after becoming imperial property during the reign of emperor Galba, a reign in which Nais lived. They had previously been owned by the Sulpicii family, between its southeast slope and the Monte Testaccio, near the Tiber River. They mostly stored olive oil and wine.

Nais was a freedwoman (liberta), a former slave. Mentioned on Aurelia's grave are two men by the names of Gaius Aurelius Phileros and Lucius Valerius Secundus. The inscription describes Gaius and Lucius as fellow freedmen. The precise relationship between the woman and two men is unclear, but they would all have been Roman citizens. They may have had shared business interests, with Gaius and Lucius honoring Nais by displaying this on the grave. Aurelia may have died first, with the other two putting up the inscription; the lines describing her are better-carved in larger letters, and uninterrupted by the wreath. The stone has three hollows in the top, presumably for holding the cremation urns of the three individuals named on the stone.