John Bodel, W. Duncan MacMillan II Professor of Classics, Professor of History, Director of Early Cultures at Brown University, RI, USA - Introduction to Roman Epigraphy. Conference at the Royal University of Fine Arts, Faculty of Archaeology, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, May 25, 2016 Visible Words Workshop in Cambodia, 2016

1. Royal University of Fine Arts
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
25 May 2016

3. The Periods of Roman History
Pre-­history 1200 – 754 BCE
Regal 753 – 510 BCE
Republic 509 – 31 BCE
Empire 27 BCE – 476 CE
Late Antiquity 330 – 576 CE
Byzantine 330 – 1453 CE

4. Roman expansion
(500 BCE-­ 117 CE)

5. Numbers of Roman inscriptions
Regal + republican period: > 5,000
Imperial: 400,000 (Latin)
+ 50,000 (Greek)
City of Rome
(population ca. 100 BCE – 300 CE: 1,000,000)
100,000 total inscriptions
40,000 epitaphs

6. The media of Roman inscriptions
stone
(marble, limestone, travertine, tufa, ‘local’ stone)
metal
(bronze, lead, tin)
clay (terracotta)
(before and after firing)
plaster
(painted and scratched [graffiti])
tile tesserae
(mosaic)
wood
(inked leaves and waxed tablets)

7. Texts
on
stone
Stonecutter’s tools

8. block capital script
cursive script

9. ductus
of painted
capital
script
cursive
script

10. ligatures, apices, tall and small letters, special signs, numerals

12. Res Gestae Divi Augusti (ca. 13 CE)
“the Queen of Inscriptions” (regina inscriptionum) Theodor Mommsen
(35 paragraphs + Appendix, more than 4,000 words)

14. CIL VI 14179

17. CC
CIL
CIL X 1018 = ILS 5942Edict of T. Suedius Clemens
(Pompeii,ca. 65 CE)

18. metal
applied
inlaid
engraved
molded
scratched

19. Campus Martius,
Mausoleum Augusti,
and Obelisk
Rome

20. Horologium Augusti, Mausoleum, and Ara Pacis

22. aes perenne
lex de imperio Vespasiani

26. Curse tablet
(Bologna ca. 300 CE)
lead

27. ‘Instrumentum domesticum’
lead water pipe (fistula) with the name of the empress Livia

28. slave collars

29. Roman
brickstamps

30. texts
on
amphorae

31. graffiti

33. paint & plaster

35. mosaic

36. MAGERIUS MOSAIC
SMIRAT, TUNISIA
(Ca. 250 CE)

37. AE 1967, 549 =
AE 2000, 1598

38. Columbarium of C. Scribonius C.l. Menophilus
Rome, Villa Doria Pamphili

41. Vindolanda,
Britain
(ca. 150 CE)

43. writing tablets

44. http://usepigraphy.brown.edu/

45. Digital resources
Databases
EAGLE = Electronic Archive of Greek and Latin Epigraphy (the official database
project of the international organization, AIEGL)
http://www.edr-­edr.it/index_it.html
Greek
AIO = Attic Inscriptions Online (Cardiff, Stephen Lambert)
https://www.atticinscriptions.com/
IAph2007 = Inscriptions of Aphrodisias (King’s College London, J. Reynolds, C.
Roueché, and G. Bodard)
http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/iaph2007/index.html
IG = Inscriptiones Graecae (Berlin, Klaus Hallof et al.) (needs password available
upon request)
http://www.bbaw.de/bbaw/Forschung/Forschungsprojekte/ig/de/blanko.2007-­05-­
04.9136476605
PHI = The Packard Humanities Institute
http://epigraphy.packhum.org/inscriptions/main

46. Latin
ACE = Archivum Corporis Electronicum (Berlin, CIL)
http://cil.bbaw.de/cil_en/dateien/datenbank_eng.php
EDB = Epigraphic Database Bari (Bari, C. Carletti)
http://www.edb.uniba.it/
EDCS = Epigraphik-­Datenbank Clauss/Slaby (Eichstätt, M. Clauss)
http://db.edcs.eu/epigr/epi_en.php
EDH = Epigraphische Datenbank (Heidelberg, [G. Alföldy] and Francisca Feraudi-­
Gruenais)
http://www.uni-­heidelberg.de/institute/sonst/adw/edh
EDR = Epigraphic Database Roma (Rome, S. Panciera)
http://www.edr-­
edr.it/edr_programmi/res_complex_comune.php?lang=eng&ver=simp
HispEp = Hispania Epigraphica (Alcalá, Joaquín Gómez-­Pantoja)
http://eda-­bea.es/

47. Other internet resources
Societies
AIEGL = Association Internationale d'Epigraphie Grecque et Latine
http://www.aiegl.org/
ASGLE = American Society of Greek and Latin Epigraphy:
http://classics.case.edu/asgle/
BES = British Epigraphy Society:
http://www.britishepigraphysociety.org/
Other
CoDE = Center of Digital Epigraphy (Brown, J. Bodel & M. Satlow)
http://www.brown.edu/Research/CoDE/
CDS = Center For Digital Scholarship (Brown, Eli Mylonas)
http://library.brown.edu/cds/
CSAD = Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents (Oxford, C. Crowther):
http://www.csad.ox.ac.uk
Center for Epigraphical and Palaeographical Studies (Ohio State)
http://epigraphy.osu.edu/
CLAROS (concordance of Greek inscriptions)
http://www.dge.filol.csic.es/claros/cnc/3cnc.htm

48. Other internet resources
Societies
AIEGL = Association Internationale d'Epigraphie Grecque et Latine
http://www.aiegl.org/
ASGLE = American Society of Greek and Latin Epigraphy:
http://classics.case.edu/asgle/
BES = British Epigraphy Society:
http://www.britishepigraphysociety.org/
Other
CoDE = Center of Digital Epigraphy (Brown, J. Bodel & M. Satlow)
http://www.brown.edu/Research/CoDE/
CDS = Center For Digital Scholarship (Brown, Eli Mylonas)
http://library.brown.edu/cds/
CSAD = Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents (Oxford, C. Crowther):
http://www.csad.ox.ac.uk
Center for Epigraphical and Palaeographical Studies (Ohio State)
http://epigraphy.osu.edu/
CLAROS (concordance of Greek inscriptions)
http://www.dge.filol.csic.es/claros/cnc/3cnc.htm

49. EpiDoc (digital editing conventions)
http://epidoc.sourceforge.net/index.shtml
Epilab = Laboritorio di Epigrafia (Trieste, C. Zaccaria and M. Hainzmann)
http://www.univ.trieste.it/~epilab/
Fonti epigrafiche (Bologna, A. Cristofori):
http://www.rassegna.unibo.it/epigrafi.html
USEP = U.S. Epigraphy Project (Greek and Latin inscriptions in USA) (Brown,
J. Bodel):
http://usepigraphy.brown.edu/
N.B.: All the major corpora and supplement projects (IG, SEG, CIL, AE) now
have websites where recent developments are reported. In addition, many of
the world's leading museums of Greek and Roman antiquities are in the
process of making the epigraphic materials in their inventories available (in
various forms) at their websites.

50. FINIS