Current Epigraphy

Prof. S. Panciera (Rome) in his introductory remarks expresses his willingness and enthusiasm in embracing the IT Revolution and applying it to the study of inscriptions. At the same time, however, he shows frustration and disappointment for the slowness with which the work proceeds and for the lack of agreement in aims and methods to follow. In fact, while it is appreciable that there are many individual projects, it is nonetheless essential to work in collaboration with each other. Standardisation is needed!

Elaine Matthews (Oxford) in her paper reproduces a general tracing of the development of IT in many of its applications and explains the introduction of it in epigraphy. The IT revolution is nothing new; it is at least sixty years old and classicists’ use of it has a history of some forty years. Individual projects are a reliable testimony of certain activity in the field. Some early projects are mentioned, such as the David W. Packard’s 1968 Concordance to Livy and the TLG online. More recent exploitations of technology applied for in the Classical world include EpiDoc and LGPN. At the end of her reconstruction of the history of the IT Revolution, E. Matthews stresses the importance of IT in the future of epigraphy. This, she explains, does not mean that every single epigrapher has to have technical knowledge, but it does mean that someone must engage with the technology!

John Bodel (Brown University) is the second and last speaker of this plenary session. In tune with Prof. Panciera and Elaine Matthews, he emphasises the importance of embracing the IT Revolution in the study of inscriptions. It is not a matter of it being necessary or worth it but inevitable! The IT Revolution has indeed already touched the world of epigraphy. A pioneer in digital epigraphy was D. Packard (Concordance to Livy, 1968). Packard’s mark-up system, known as Beta Code, was then adopted by the TLG in 1981 and quickly established itself as the standard means of encoding polytonic Greek. These early initiatives were important for raising general awareness of the potentials of computers. J. Bodel defines our days as “the age of digital epigraphy”. There have been many important advances in digital epigraphy during the last decade that can lead us towards a more optimistic vision of the future. Three broad areas have been particularly touched: 1) Databases. – EAGLE (Collaboration among three projects: Heidelberg, Rome, Bari). The federation is open and recently a fourth initiative has been welcomed into the community, namely HISPANIA EPIGRAPHICA ONLINE. 2) Images. The use of technology can provide high quality at relatively low cost images. – X ray fluorescence imaging. – Polynomial texture mapping. – GRAVA. 3) Editing. – EpiDoc. Two pilot projects are “The Vindolanda Tablets online” and “Inscriptions of Aphrodisias”. Recently the EpiDoc system has been adopted in papyrology and numismatics as well. We now have all the tools we need to perform efficiently and the potential benefits to epigraphers of the new information technology are widely recognised!

John Ma (Corpus Christi College, Oxford), “Greek Epigraphy and the Representation of Authority”, offered a refreshingly ‘outside the box’ lecture revolving around the intricate ways inscriptions represent authority. Authority in inscriptions may be specified (the demos, the body politic, the ruler, an hierarchical chain of command of officials [as in SEG 37.1010], divine power), implied, or even be internal, when the inscribed text poses as a self-fulfilling demonstration of power. The effect is amplified by the choice of an ἐπιφανέστατος τόπος where the inscribed monument is erected. The presence of the inscribed text in a place of preexisting high status and the preeminence and visibility thus achieved entrenches power in two ways: it confirms the power the text evokes and it confirms the power of the text itself. However, one must not forget that this is a power to which the reader may or may not yield. The inscribed text, therefore, is often best seen as a form of social magic, a contract with the eventual reader; in other words, a magic of consent. The inscribed text, naturally, attempts to hide its actual impotence by concentrating on its projected authority; this is another reminder for epigraphers that philological expertise is hardly enough to help us understand inscriptions without the use of our sense of historical realities and our sense of discourse.

M. B. Hatzopoulos (Research Centre for Greek and Roman Antiquity, Athens), “An Old and New Inscription from Mieza: the Constitution of Extensive Landed Properties in the Central Macedonian Plain and the Question of λαοί in Hellenistic Macedonia” dealt with the creation of large estates in Macedonia. It was already well-known that extensive estates were a common feature of the Central Macedonian Plain in Roman times. A new fragment of the already known list of deeds of sale from Mieza, allows us to see how such large estates were created. All ten deeds of sale (actually copies of the official deeds set up by the owner himself) concern acquisitions of land by a certain Zopyros over a period of three years; all parcels of land bought by him were apparently situated in the same area, the northern part of the territory of Mieza; Zopyros obviously attempted to form a continuous extended property, probably larger than the great royal donations in the New Lands. How was such an estate exploited? The general consensus has been that laoi, dependent farmers attached to the land were not and could not be attested in Antigonid Macedonia. However, the well-attested royal practice of transferring populations should have led to caution; now, a new unpublished decree of Kyrrhos explicitly mentions laoi in early-third-century Macedonia.

Cédric Brélaz (École Française d’Athènes), “La langue des indigènes sur le territoire de la colonie romaine de Philippes”, drew attention to the fact that in Philippi, in contrast with the majority of Roman colonies in Greece, where the prevailing language outside the small circle of colonists is Greek, there are several inscriptions of the incolae in Latin. Since practically all such Latin inscriptions belong to persons of Thracian origin, the speaker convincingly argued that the appeal of Latin to these populations was due to the lesser degree of hellenization in the territory of Philippi. This relative appeal of Latin is also attested in other insufficiently hellenized Roman colonies of the Greek East.

Slavica Babamova-Janik (Institute for National History, Skopje), “Personal names of the inhabitants of eastern Paeonia in the Roman period”, dealt with the onomastics of eastern Paeonia. A perusal of old and new inscriptions led her to the conclusion that many names of that area which have been characterized as Thracian should be considered epichoric, part of the local substratum of the Balkan peninsula.

Manuela Mari (Università degli Studi di Cassino), “Epigraphic evidence on the cults of Amphipolis”, provided a full overview of all sources on the cults of Amphipolis. Three main features emerged: a) remnants of the city’s Athenian past persisted into much later periods; b) the number of cults is surprisingly high, surely a testimony to the city’s cosmopolitan and religiously open-minded character; c) personality cult (primarily, but not exclusively, royal cult) was particularly popular.

Susan Walker (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) introduced this session with some remarks about the difficulties involved in persuading administrators to take the display of inscriptions seriously, especially within a large museum environment such as the British Museum. Yet both papers sounded encouraging notes in this session.

Isabel Rodà de Llanza (Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology, Barcelona) in a presentation entitled “Exposicíon de inscripciones” surveyed recent evolutions of the idea of the epigraphic museum, using the evidence of colloquia on the subject and newly conceived or renovated museums. She suggested that some of the best museums were those that presented an integrated view of a few monuments in context, as opposed to those that attempted to offer an integral display of an entire epigraphic collection. Praise was also extended to museums that now make use of multimedia displays, such as the Musée d’archéologie et d’histoire de Montréal.

Charalambos Kritzas (Epigraphical Museum, Athens), “Teaching with Inscriptions: Beyond the Alphabet”, took as a starting point his role as director of the best collection of inscriptions in Greece. He focused on the elaboration of teaching and interactive displays at the Epigraphical Museum and also singled out the local museums of Rhodes and Chios that have recently been made more accessible and attractive to visitors. Kritzas seemed on the whole to agree with Rodà de Llanza’s acclaim of the ‘integrated’ epigraphic collection, and he concluded with a description of possibly the best example of the genre: the Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki.

Giulia Baratta focused her attention on the marginal role and inadequacy that affect inscriptions in museums and archaeological sites. An average tourist is resonably more attracted by a monument, in particular if iconographically rich, than an inscribed stone written in an almost incomprehensible language, it being Greek, Latin or any ancient language. In fact, a statue is more accessibly amusing than a few inscribed lines. A better attention on the epigraphic material is needed by the people in charge of the organisation of museums and archaeological sites in order to stimulate the interest of tourists and non-specialists. Some “shameful” examples of bad use and display of inscriptions are given (eg. Rome, Pompei, Lyon): inscriptions are abandoned in corners, put in a non accessible and legible area, without captions, comments and translations. Often inscriptions are a crucial part of monuments and their knowledge could offer a better understanding of the monuments themselves; however, all the interest of the tourist is focused on the monument since that is where the attention is driven.

Giulia Baratta’s paper is an observation on the unfair role given to inscriptions within archaeological areas. This point of view is shared by Antonio Santori (Universita’ di Milano, Italy) who gave a paper in the same session, “Museographia Epigraphica”, entitled “La comunicazione epigrafica e l’epigrafia comunicata”. His advice is to use a considerable number of inscriptions and create a separate area for them within a museum, a sort of “epigraphic gallery”. The inscriptions should be cleaned properly and lit with a good, possibly individual, light. In order to be more accessible to people, they should also have a quite detailed and clear caption with description and translation.

In general, both papers show big disappointment for the very limited role and scarce importance given to inscriptions in museums and archaeological sites.

The two lectures of this session dealt with (mostly Roman) demography and identity (mostly of rural Asia Minor).

Walter Scheidel (Stanford), “Epigraphy and Demography: Birth, marriage, family and death”, presented an overview of the advances in demographic studies, mostly on the Roman empire. Although no useable information on fertility is provided by epigraphy, inscriptions allow us to affirm that there is a spike in the number of births in January, just as in the premodern Mediterranean. They also allow an analysis of the age of marriage. They confirm that the nuclear family is, by far, the key social bond in urban environments, although more extended families are attested in the countryside. The sex ratio of inscriptions (the attested number of men per 100 attested women) is often exceptionally high in the epigraphic data, due to epigraphic habits rather than demographic realities. Mortality rates, contrary to the older consensus, cannot be deduced by the dates recorded in epitaphs. There are, however, data on seasonal mortality: the late summer / early autumn was a dangerous period of the year in Rome, while comparison with some other major cities, where no observable pattern in seasonal mortality is observed, allows the assumption that they were healthier places to live in than the capital of the empire.

Scheidel’s working paper can be found here (pdf).

Christoph Schuler (Kommission für Alte Geschichte und Epigraphik, Munich), “Inscriptions and the identity of population groups: case studies from the countryside”, studied the connection between epigraphy and the identity of rural population in Roman Asia Minor. Taking the middle road between two opposite views (the countryside as a world apart – the countryside as an integral part of the city), the speaker used a variety of evidence ­–dedications to local manifestations of weather gods, archaeological evidence from rural sanctuaries, atonement inscriptions– in a convincing attempt to show how epigraphy and the rural sense of identity are interrelated; how pride in the local cult is portrayed through epigraphy, thus further reinforcing the sense of distinct identity.