Novata: étimo de Noheda y nombre de la villa de Octavio Novato en Segóbriga y la inscripción del Mimo del Celoso a la luz de Plauto (Num tibi...?)

The toponym Noheda derives from Novata, the name of the Roman villa belonging to Novatus, about 500 metres away. In the 1st century, the owners of the villa must have been the praefectus fabrum Manius Octavius Novatus, son of Titus, and his son and senator, who sponsored the theatre of Segobriga. The villa’s mosaics show several theatrical pieces after the renovation carried out by his successors around the 4th century. One of them, entitled Mimu(s) zelotipi, presents a plot and characters similar to those of a story by Apuleius (met. 9,16-21) and transmits the words Num ti(bi...?) from a verse by Plautus (Amph. 709). The estate may have belonged to the Segobriga district, whose eastern border with Valeria must have been the river Jucar and the Sierra de Bascuñana, up to the northern border with Erca- vica, including the lapis specularis mines of the region.