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The first half of the 19 th century saw the growth of characters deeply innervated in the cultural environment of the city they belonged to, in several Italian provincial realities. Outside the main
poles of scientific attraction, they tried to develop the valorization of their homeland history. Thus, they sought on the basis of their own experiences, of interwoven friendships, of their own sensitivity, to get out of from the microcosm of their origin. Thus, they established collaborative relationships with writers and scholars working in those cities that increasingly proved to be owners and guarantors of the new cultural dynamics. Furthermore, they aligned with those new stimuli required and imposed by the progress of the sciences. The De Minicis brothers belonged to this world.
Even the father of the epigraphic science Theodor Mommsen, whose study of Roman history and
epigraphy is still a point of reference in contemporary research, who, in his private travel diaries defined Gaetano “as ignorant as he was kind” and was bored by his “epigraphic vanity”, at the end he publicly recognized, in the preface to his CIL IX of 1873, the De Minicis museum was very rich (uberrimum) and had to admit: “Miniciorum ut doctrina non magna fuit, ita fides optima ed diligentia summa, ut tuto insistas iis quae ad hisce auctoribus tradita accepimus” (The De Minicis doctrine was not great, but their reliability and diligence assured you about the truthfulness of information described by these authors).