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).

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.

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.

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.

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.