CIPPO. - A parallelepiped of stone or marble, used either to indicate a burial and thus bearing the relevant inscription, or to mark a boundary or frontier.
Sepulchral cippi have been known since the most remote antiquity and were also used by Christians for their open-air tombs in Rome and throughout all the regions of the Empire, according to the local forms in use. Such, for example, Abercio (v.) and that of Tollia Asclepiake (v. BASSILLA). Examples of Christian boundary or property cippi, sometimes cylindrical in shape, are preserved in the Lateran Christian Museum, such as those of the vineae Irenianae with monogram 8, from the Villa Panfili; a cippus with an inscription of the 5th century on one side and, on the other, one of the 6th-7th century indicating a property of the monastery of SS. Andrea and Stefano near S. Maria Maggiore; a boundary column relating to a property of the diaconia of S. Adriano in the Roman Forum; and finally one referring to a spinning mill, dated 1029.