“The Epigraphic Habit in the Roman World”, en Ch. Bruun y J. Edmonson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy, Oxford — New York 2015, 131-148. (original) (raw)
Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy. CH. 22. The City of Rome
C. Bruun and J. Edmondson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy, 2015
This chapter shows the importance of inscriptions for the study of life in the ancient city of Rome. Because of the richness of the epigraphic evidence, the city is crucial for understanding the Roman empire as a whole.
"Explaining the Epigraphic Habit In the Roman Empire: the Evidence of Epitaphs"
Journal of Roman Studies, 1990
It is now notorious that the production of inscriptions in the Roman Empire was not constant over time, but rose over the first and second centuries A.D. and fell in the third. Ramsay MacMullen pointed this out more than five years ago, with conclusions more cautionary than explanatory: ‘history is not being written in the right way’, he said, for historians have deduced Rome's decline from evidence that–since it appears only epigraphically–has merely disappeared for its own reasons, or have sought general explanations of decline in theories political, economic, or even demographic in nature, none of which can, in turn, explain the disappearance of epigraphy itself. Why this epigraphic habit rose and fell MacMullen left open to question, although he did postulate control by a ‘sense of audience’. The purpose of this paper is to propose that this ‘sense of audience’ was not generalized or generic, but depended on a belief in the value of romanization, of which (as noted but not explained by MacMullen's article) the epigraphic habit is also a rough indicator. Epitaphs constitute the bulk of all provincial inscriptions and in form and number are (generally speaking) the consequence of a provincial imitation of characteristically Roman practices, an imitation that depended on the belief that Roman legal status and style were important, and that may indeed have ultimately depended, at least in North Africa, on the acquisition or prior possession of that status. Such status-based motivations for erecting an epitaph help to explain not only the chronological distribution of epitaphs but also the differences in the type and distribution of epitaphs in the western and eastern halves of the empire. They will be used here moreover to suggest an explanation for the epigraphic habit as a whole.
Reading Epigraphic Culture, Writing Funerary Space in the Roman City
Chapter 3, Written Space in the Latin West, 200 BC to AD 300 (Bloomsbury Publishing) 49-64, 2013
The presence of inscriptions in funerary contexts tests the boundaries of our understanding of what it meant to be a part of an oral-literate society and a participating member of a pervasive epigraphic culture. To appreciate the significance underpinning this juxtaposition of social and cultural issues, we should consider the implications of a single question: Who made these inscriptions? Determining ‘who’ calls for the inquirer to examine how possible it was for any member of the ancient population to formulate – articulate, produce, and transmit – a written message within the extra-mural spaces of Rome’s funerary environment. The extent to which inscriptions seem to address interpretative issues of concern to the composer, the ancient society, and the modern researcher – for instance, the manner and subject of public commemoration – is a necessary addendum to the questions of literacy, epigraphic technique, and the sociolinguistic system in Classical antiquity. This finding must also address how accessible the location chosen was for any individual, and the degree of significance which that person attached to the context of memorialization. These points of inquiry lead the investigator to a discussion of modes of social mobility, kinds and numbers of intended audiences, and the thought processes, values, and beliefs shared by members of different communities under Roman rule.
Inhabiting a lettered world: Exploring the fringes of Roman writing habits. (BICS 59 (2016) 26-41).
Based on a survey of the evidence for perishable and liminal Roman material writing habits that might appropriately be described as ‘fringe epigraphy’, this paper invites a conceptual re-evaluation of writing and the role of letters, words, and texts – including their perception – in the Roman world. It thus challenges recent attempts of an all too narrow disciplinary, institutional view of what might constitute Latin epigraphy. Much rather, it is argued, it seems appropriate to think of the Roman world as a fundamentally lettered one – a world that is not only described and perceived, but, in actual fact, even imagined and explained in such terms, allowing for fluid transitions from monumental to informal, from serious and communication-driven to playful, pointless, and sensational, and ultimately from real to imagined.
Epigraphic culture and the epigraphic mode - 2023
in Rebecca Benefiel and Catherine Keesling, eds., Inscriptions and the Epigraphic Habit (Brill: Leiden and Boston), 2023
Over the past half century the field of epigraphic studies has shifted away from a quasi-exclusive focus on the editing and interpretation of ancient Greek and Latin inscriptions to broader consideration of the place of inscribed writing in classical culture. Discussions of an “epigraphic habit” and of the relevance of inscriptions for evaluating ancient levels and types of literacy have developed independently and have followed different courses, to the extent that the very definition of “inscription” has once again been opened. This paper proposes a new way of assessing the “epigraphic” quality of any type of ancient writing along a scale of modality measured by the degree to which it takes advantage visually of its location, material support, language, writing technique, layout, or register of expression to enhance its meaning for its targeted audience. Various types of the form are illustrated, exempli gratia, with inscriptions drawn predominantly from Pompeii.
F. Beltrán Lloris and B. Díaz Ariño (eds.), El nacimiento de las culturas epigráficas en el occidente Mediterráneo. Modelos romanos y desarrollos locales (ss. III-I a.E.) (Madrid, Anejos de AEspA LXXXV), 131-144, 2018
Sicily has a vibrant and individual epigraphic culture from the Archaic period onwards. Using the data available from the I.Sicily project, this paper surveys the epigraphic culture of the island in order to contextualise and analyse epigraphic practice on the island in the Hellenistic period. The material is predominantly Greek in this period, with a minor presence of Punic, Oscan, and Latin. Analysis concentrates on lapidary epigraphy, but includes a discussion of bronze epigraphy and honorific practices on bronze, which show distinctive local features. Epigraphic practices on the island, and the linguistic evidence in particular, suggests an independent and distinctively Sicilian epigraphic tradition that belongs within the wider Hellenistic Mediterranean context and is almost wholly unaffected by Roman practices until the Augustan period.
Introduction: Defining the field : The epigraphic cultures of Late Antiquity
2017
The aim of this book – and of the conference on which it was based – is to document and discuss the diversity and wealth of the epigraphic cultures of Late Antiquity. It is an attempt at understanding the various political, cultural and religious structures that characterized this period, and the special place occupied by inscriptions in the societies that produced and lived with them. Our goal is, therefore, to put these inscribed artefacts in their wider sociopolitical and physical contexts, illustrating the ways in which monuments and texts were related to the world around them. The chapters that follow propose to explore the geographic and typological diversity of late antique epigraphy as well as the many textual forms and material supports through which these epigraphic practices have come down to us. One of the central arguments pursued here is that, although marked by essential continuities, late antique epigraphy differed from that of previous periods in many important way...