On January 7, 2012 at the joint annual meetings of the American Philological Association and the Archaeological Institute of America, Garrett G. Fagan (Pennsylvania State University) presented a paper entitled “The Traveler’s Bill?” The paper considers a well-known inscription from Aesernia (modern Isernia in Italy) (EDR 079026 = EDH HD000649 with photo = CIL 9.2689 = ILS 7478).
Although the text begins with a common funerary formula (vivus fecit), Fagan argues against accepting it as an irreverent sepulchral inscription. Rather, he would see a humorous commercial sign for an inn. As evidence, Fagan considers the illustration, the possibility of reading personal names as puns (L. Calidius Eroticus et Fannia Voluptatis = Lucius Hotstuff Lover and Fannia Fuck), and a common literary and visual trope of associating enjoyment and relaxation with death and the brevity of life. Fagan notes that the stone is thin enough (31 cm) to have been fitted into a wall or over a lintel. For comparison, Fagan introduces EDR 030788 = CIL 6.10036(1) — a shop sign from Rome possibly depicting prostitutes for an establishment named “sorores IIII” (the four sisters).
On noon on February 15th, 2012, John Hessler will be giving a lecture entitled “Written in Stone: Roman law, Legal Epigraphy and the Geography of Roman Agriculture” in the Madison Building, LM-240, Multimedia Room of the US Library of Congress. He provides the following details:
The middle of the Bagradas vallley is located southwest of Carthage, between roughly sixty and eighty kilometers from the northern Mediterranean coast, in the region of northern Tunisia known as the Tell interieur. The term Tell designates those areas in Algeria and Tunisia subject to a Mediterranean climate, that is, to at least 400 mm of rainfall each year, sufficient to allow the cultivation of grain and olives without irrigation. The area has been an agricultural zone for thousands of years, and most intensively, with the escalation of Roman agriculture in period between 100 and 500 AD.
Within the region are found many of the most important legal inscriptions relating to the practice of agriculture and tenant farming, all of which provide a window into the how land and estates were managed and how tenant farmers made a living during this time of rapid growth in the Roman population. Inscriptions such as those found at Henchir-Mettich and Souk-el-Khmis provide us with information about the legal system under which this agriculture operated, and also, and perhaps more importantly, gives us hints into the geography and extent of Roman agriculture in North Africa when it was the ‘bread basket’ of the empire.
In this talk will Hessler will discuss his travels in Tunisia and Algeria in search of these and other legal inscriptions, and also talk about what these seemingly dry fragments of Roman law tell us about how the Romans managed their estates and environment, and how sharecroppers took advantage of the Roman system of petition and response to maintain their rights to the land.
A poster version of the above, in PDF format, is attached: Hessler 2012 Lecture.
Mireille Corbier, director of L’Année épigraphique (Paris, corbier@msh-paris.fr), writes to announce that L’Année épigraphique 2008 (containing 1,770 entries and 960 pages, including 210 pages of index) was published in August, 2011, and is now available. Orders should be sent to Presses Universitaires de France at revues@puf.com.
Over at e-pigraphia, we learn about a seminar on “Epigraphy, society and culture in ancient Rome.” It is organized by the Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica and will be held 2-4 March 2011.
Over at the Sito Italiano di Epigrafia Greca (SITEG), Alice Bencivenni reports on an EpiDoc/SoSOL training workshop held at the Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, 10-14 January 2011.
Dates: 25 May – 1 July 2011
Location: University of Roma Tor Vergata
More information: http://sites.tufts.edu/latiumvetus/
From Monica Berti:
The 2011 Latium Vetus Program, as part of a collaborative project between Tufts University and Roma Tor Vergata, will allow students to learn the techniques of modern epigraphic study, including digital transcription and documentation of inscriptions, and they will have the unique opportunity to work on unpublished texts from the huge corpus of inscriptions of Ancient Latium and to contribute to the ongoing project of digitizing and publishing these inscriptions.
As an intensive course of first-hand epigraphic and archaeological site and museum study based at the campus of Tor Vergata University and led by Monica Berti of Roma Tor Vergata and J. Matthew Harrington of Tufts University, this program will combine close study of epigraphic remains with exploration of the archaeological contexts and analysis of relevant Latin sources from the sites of Latium and Campania: Rome, Ostia, Pompeii, Tivoli, Praeneste, Veii, Lanuvium, Albano Laziale, Cerveteri, Herculaneum, Nemi, Anzio, Tusculum, Falerii Novi, Sutri, Tarquinia, Napoli, Paestum, Lucus Feroniae, Boscoreale, Oplontis, and more.
Today, at the First North American Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy in San Antonio, Texas, Werner Eck presented a keynote address entitled “Documents on Bronze: A Phenomenon of the West?” I offer the following summary largely from memory, hoping that other readers present will correct errors and supplement deficiencies.
Eck’s thesis is that we can discern an essential difference in epigraphic habit across the Roman empire: normative documents of public import (i.e., publicae constitutiones) were customarily inscribed on bronze in Latin-speaking areas, whereas stone was the preferred material in Greek-speaking provinces. Bronze was clearly used everywhere, for a variety of epigraphic purposes, but with regard to public legal documents divergeant practice is argued. Eck posits that these opposing patterns were set long before the empire came into existence and were so strongly established that even centuries of Roman rule caused little erosion of the Greek pattern.
The paper begins with a helpful consideration of the range of inscribed materials and documentary types reflected in the historical record and the low survival rates for same. This theme carries on throughout the paper, and appropriate examples are marshaled to support the thesis. Some highlights: Inscriptions on wood may have constituted 90% of the inscribed documents (most intended as ephemera and now almost entirely lost). Less than one percent of military diplomata (on bronze) survive. These are found in both Latin- and Greek-speaking areas, and many have clearly appeared through at the hands of metal detectorists. As the mode of discovery is similar for many celebrated Western bronze leges, we would expect the same pattern in the east, but don’t see it. Bronze likely suffers loss disproportionately (it could be melted down for reuse, and generally was); therefore, we must imagine a disproportionate loss of normative, public texts from the West. The few Roman-period examples of normative public documents on bronze in the East are explained either as having been so specified in the originating document itself (there is evidence for such provision), or the product of Roman (pro-)magistrates doing things the way they were accustomed to do them.
Afterward, some audience members challenged Eck’s characterization of the Greek-speaking east as a place where some public documents were traditionally inscribed on wood and stone, citing examples from Argos, Athens and elsewhere during the Archaic and Classical periods. Eck maintained his thesis, seeking distinctions between the examples offered and the types of texts he feels were distinctively “on bronze” in the West, but expressed interest in getting more details that might affect his approach.
Dr Michael Metcalfe writes with the sad news, widely reported in the Italian press, of the death in Ferbruary of Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli. Here is one obituary, selected at random: http://www.ilmattino.it/articolo.php?id=91116&sez=NAPOLI .
Manuel Ramírez reports on the publication of Cultura Escrita & Sociedad vol. 9 2009, entitled Epigrafía y cultura escrita en la Antigüedad clásica.
The following lecture (in New York) has just been announced:
Rediscovering the inscriptions of Campa (Vietnam)
Speaker: Arlo Griffiths
Location: 2nd Floor Lecture Room
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 E 84th St
New York, NY
Date: Monday, March 8 2010
Time: 6:00 p.m.
The aim of this lecture is to inform the interested New York public on recent developments in the study of the written records of ancient ‘Indianized’ polities in Southeast Asia. We will take as example the epigraphic corpus of the ancient Campa kingdom(s), which lay in what is now central and southern Vietnam. The study of Campa epigraphy involves texts in Sanskrit and in the poorly known vernacular Old Cam language, which belongs to the Austronesian language family. This field of research once flourished in French colonial times, then all but died out after WW II, and has only recently been resuscitated from a coma that lasted for decades. Newly discovered inscriptions have started to be published again, and a census of Campa inscriptions was undertaken last September-October in museums and archaeological sites of Vietnam. The aim of the census was to up-date the general inventory of Campa inscriptions, whose last published installment dates to 1942, and to record essential data of previously known and newly discovered epigraphical documents. The presentation will discuss general aspects of Southeast Asian epigraphy, as well as specific aspects of the Campa corpus and the history of its study. Some new inscriptions, which throw interesting new light on the history of Campa and its place within the larger scale development of Southeast Asian history, will be selected for close inspection.
Arlo Griffiths holds a PhD in Sanskrit from Leiden University. After holding a position as lecturer in Indian Religions at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), and holding the chair of Sanskrit at Leiden University, he joined the French School of Asian Studies (L’École française d’Extrême-Orient) in 2008 as Professor of Southeast Asian history. His main fields of interest are Hindu religious/ritual literature in Sanskrit, on the one hand, and inscriptions of Southeast Asia in Sanskrit and vernacular languages, on the other. His approach to the (ancient) history of Southeast Asia is primarily epigraphic, and he is currently involved in projects concerning the inscriptions of ancient Cambodia, ancient Indonesia, and Campa.
This afternoon, Chuck Jones alerts us to the re-appearance of the journal Τεκμήρια (ISSN 1106-661x). It is now operating as “a peer reviewed open access journal” under the auspices of the Ινστιτούτο Eλληνικής και Pωμαϊκής Aρχαιότητος (Κ.Ε.Ρ.Α.). Back issues are available on the site (built with the Open Journal Systems publishing system), and in many cases the articles are available in page-scan PDFs and OCR’d PDFs. Information about the reconstituted journal and its submission and review policies are also available. The table of contents for the new issue (vol. 9 = 2008) is worth a look!
My congratulations to the editors and advisers is tempered only by two factors: the discovery that the OCR PDFs seem to employ a custom (non-unicode) font encoding, and a lack of clarity about copyright and license. The non-standard encoding constitutes an unfortunate choice that undermines long-term digital preservation. On the copyright front, the site lacks a clear statement of what the editors and the sponsoring organization mean by “open access”. Though copyright is asserted via a simple statement at the bottom of each web page (“ “), one misses an increasingly standard feature of “open-access” publications: a Creative Commons license (or other) statement indicating what users may (and may not) do with the material presented.
The preliminary program has just been posted for the August 2009 conference in Berlin of the Fédération internationale des Associations d’études classiques / International Federation of the Societies of Classical Studies. Among the panels listed there, we find one on the topic “Epigraphical Documents: Reflection of Reality or Construction of Historical Knowledge?”
I take the liberty of reproducing the list of speakers, with titles and links to abstracts in pdf:
Invited speakers:
Francisco Beltrán Lloris:
Angelos Matthaiou: Palmyra
zugelassene Bewerber in alphabetischer Reihenfolge:
Alejandr García González (Universidad de Valladolid, España)
Los ‘otros’ epitafios y dedicaciones greco-latinos: inversiones, burlas y parodias
Anja Knebusch (Berlin, Deutschland)
Die metrischen Inschriften Germaniens als Spiegelbild provinzieller Bildung
Aleksandr Koptev (Helsinki, Finlandl):
A possible lacuna in the Roman Fasti Consulares
Sophia Kravaritou (Archaeological Institute for Thessalian Studies, Greece):
Greek “Calendars”: ancient documents through modern consideration
Luca Maurizi (University of Helsinki, Finland)
Autorappresentazione senatoria nell’agorà di Atene e un nuovo proconsul Achaiae
Vladimir P. Petrovic (Académie Serbe des Sciences et des Arts, Serbia)
Les erreurs dans l’interpretation scientifique de Tabula Peutingeriana: L’emplacement de la station balnéaire de Aquae Bas sur la route Naissus-Lissus
Cecilia Ricci (Università del Molise, Italia)
Le coorti urbane: braccio armato del potere senatorio a Roma o polizia al servizio della città? Una riflessione
José Vela Tejada (Universidad de Zaragoza, España)
Koine Eirene and the Satraps’ Revolt in the Inscription of Argos (IG IV 556=SIG3 182): Historical Reality or Panhellenical Propaganda?
Gustavo Veneciano (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina)
La inscripción IvO 7
Update: I also notice the following papers of probable epigraphic interest listed in other sections:
Silvia Barbantani (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Milano, Italia)
The symbol of the spear in funerary or honorary epigrams/inscriptions for Ptolemaic philoi and soldiers
Rebecca R. Benefiel (Washington and Lee University, USA):
Pompeii and her Neighbors: ancient graffiti and civic identity
Danijela Stefanovic (Serbian Society for Ancient Studies, Serbia):
Roman Funerary Stelae from Egypt – An Overview
Jessica Piccinini (Wolfson College, University of Oxford, Great Britain)
Geographical provenance and social status of the customers of the oracle of Dodona
Judith Hallett (University of Maryland, College Park, USA) / Jacqueline Fabre-Serris (, Université de Lille, France):
AE 1928.73 (Epitaph of Petale Sulpicia) and Ovid, Tristia 3.7: Gender, Class and Roman Women’s Poetry
Michael Johnson (Davidson College, USA):
Mommsen lecture notes at Rutgers University
Burak Takmer (Akdeniz Üniversitesi Antalya, Turkey)
Lex Portorii Provinciae: Zollinschrift aus Andriake von neronischer Zeit
Lucia Criscuolo writes to alert us to the following event:
Seminario Avanzato di Epigrafia Greca
Bologna, 15-17 gennaio 2009
Novotel Bologna Fiera
via Michelino 73
Alma Mater Studiorum
Università di Bologna
Istituto di Studi Superiori
L’Istituto di Studi Superiori dell’Università di Bologna, che comprende l’Istituto di Studi Avanzati e il Collegio Superiore, organizza il primo SAEG, Seminario Avanzato di Epigrafia Greca.
Il Seminario è un’iniziativa volta innanzitutto a dottorandi, assegnisti e giovani ricercatori che intendano approfondire la propria formazione in tematiche relative alla disciplina epigrafica greca, allargare le proprie esperienze nel campo delle scienze storiche antiche o presentare eventualmente le proprie ricerche nel settore. L’occasione si prefigge inoltre di favorire un incontro tra studiosi, al fine di discutere in modo costruttivo il proprio lavoro scientifico e di confrontare i risultati delle ricerche in corso.
Per informazioni:
Lucia Criscuolo
Dipartimento di Storia Antica
Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna
lucia.criscuolo@unibo.it
Alice Bencivenni
Dipartimento di Storia Antica
Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna
alice.bencivenni2@unibo.it
[full program follows - TRE.]
(more…)
For some time I’ve been trying to follow the posting of photographs of epigraphic interest to Flickr, the photo-sharing website. Of particular interest (as previously discussed) are the groups Visibile Parlare – Visible Words (Latin) and Visibile Parlare – Visible Words (Greek). A search for the tag “inscription” is also interesting.
From time to time I think I shall highlight here items that catch my interest in these venues.
Consider a photograph posted by Sally Wilson (sallycat101) on 26 October 2008, labeled “inscribed stone, carthage.” The high resolution image of this cylindrical cippus shows only part of the text campus, for external circumstances explained by the photographer.
A little transcription and then searching in the epigraphic databases and we can find that this is a published text:
- CIL 8.22084 = ILTun 1732; registered in EDCS (photo), where we get a digital text as follows (I copy it here because there is no mechanism that I can find for direct linkage to individual records in EDCS); evidently not in EDH:
Imp(eratori) Caes(ari)
M(arco) Aurelio
Probo Pi-
o Felici Aug(usto)
pontifici
maximo
tribunici-
ae potesta-
[tis —
Which I’d translate as: “The Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius Probus Pius Felix Augustus, pontifex maximus, (holding the) tribunician power …” (the cippus is broken away from its base, destroying one or more additional lines of text).
It’s apparently a milestone (or boundary marker) of the Roman Emperor Probus (AD 276-282). There are a few other inscriptions of Probus cataloged in CIL and other corpora. Without the tribunician year or other indication of date (e.g., consular year), it may be impossible to date this particular inscription more closely.
I’m sure readers without present access to CIL or ILTun (like me) would be grateful for comments (posted here) about the context of this find (EDCS lists “Ain Ghar Salah” as the findspot), the road it may have been associated with, or other relevant matters.
