Laudator Temporis Acti

Excerpt from Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum IX, Supplementum, Pars 1, Fasc. 2 (Marrucini — Paeligni — Vestini) 7164 (near Anversa degli Abruzzi, 3rd century A.D.), tr. Michael Kulikowski, "Murranus the Pannonian and the Sorrows of the Immigrant," Revista Diálogos Mediterrânicos 21 (2021) 19-35 (at 21-22):

Salue, uiator, qui istac iter facis saluo tuo corpore, consiste et lege: iniquitate Orchi, qui perperauit saecula, quod debuerant facere filii patri et matri, fecerunt miseri pater et mater filis dulcissimis suis.

Greetings, traveller. You who pass this way sound in your body, stand and read: By the iniquity of Orcus, who batters the ages, the duty that children owe to their mother and father, a poor father and mother did for their children, their sweetest ones.

Kulikowski, p. 24:

As one might expect in the marking of a premature death, we are here introduced to the “injustice of Orchus” (iniquitate Orchi), who either deforms the course of time, batters and beats down the ages, or hastens the centuries along (perperauit saecula). The uncertain meaning is a function of the linguistic ambiguity. The aspirated form Orchus for the more correct Orcus is not unusual, but perperauit is bizarre, either a unique form related to the adverb perperam (mistakenly, amiss), a peculiar spelling of uerberare, or simply a mistake for properare.<sup>24

24</sup> The aspirated ‘c’ in Orchus might as easily be a stone-cutter’s error as the author’s. See MACKAUER, W., in RE18, pp. 908-28 for distribution of aspirated vs. unaspirated spellings. For perperavit, Mancini read perdiravit, which is both meaningless and not what one sees on the stone. Buonocore prints perperavit and takes it for a hapax related to the adverb perperam (mistakenly, amiss) and thus meaning ‘make something go wrong’ and to the Italian word sperperare (to squander or fritter away). But it may be a stonecutter’s error for verberare, to batter or strike (cf. Jerome, Comm. in Ezech. 8.27: saeculi...verberantur; ibid. 11.39: saeculi…verberantur and verberanti saeculis); or it is perhaps best read as mistake for properavit (hasten), with its Silver Age parallels in Sen., Troades 386ff.: Quo bis sena volant sidera turbine, /quo cursu properat volvere saecula / astrorum dominus, quo properat modo / obliquis hecate currere flexibus (cf. also Auson., Parent. 26.5-6; Claud., In Eutrop. 2.40ff.)

Also worth serious consideration is the proposal of Jerzy Linderski, "Updating the CIL for Italy: part 2," in Journal of Roman Archaeology 11 (1998) 458-484, rpt. in his Roman Questions II. Selected Papers (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007), pp. 369-413 (at 375):

Lines 5–8: iniquitate Orchi, qui perperavit ṣạẹcula, / quod debuerant facere filii patri et / matri, fecerunt miseri{s} pater et mater / filis dulcissimis suis. An unusual and poetic beginning, a trite and formulaic ending. In line 5 perperavit is printed as if it were fully assured, but in his commentary Buonocore notes that this reading was suggested to him by A. Mazzarino. Hence a conjecture, and a bold one for perperare is a hapax, though the meaning is clear enough: “sconvolgere l’ordine naturale” (accepted without any qualms in AE). But before we add a new word to our dictionaries, it is well to see whether a less exciting solution is available. There are two photographs appended: one of 1935, and the other of 1982. On both photographs one can clearly read only PER–––AVIT. In the partially obliterated middle part the earlier photograph seems to display the beginning of an M or N; on the later photograph there is perhaps a flicker of a P, but if it is a P, it is quite different from the first P. I propose permutavit (although the phrase itself permutare saecula does not seem to be attested nor, for that matter, is attested perturbare saecula. {But cf. Sen., Ep. 108.32: ea quae consuetudo saeculi mutavit, referring to changes in the meaning of words and locutions. See now the discussion by M. Buonocore, “Reminiscenze poetiche in un Pannone d’Abruzzo”, Bullettino della Deputazione Abruzzese di Storia Patria 80 (1990 [1992] 57–76}.