In the past two decades, there have been momentous, and ongoing, shifts in how we approach such thematically large subjects as Late Antique Christianization and urban change, as well as such methodologically broad fields as the material and spatial – rather than predominantly textual – importance of epigraphy. Interest in the afterlives of inscriptions is part of these trends. These shifts have their proponents and resistors; balance is, as always, much sought after, and seldom achieved. A recent book has contributed to both these large contexts in ways that are balanced, stimulating, and pathbreaking in many important respects, although (also as always) it leaves us with even more questions to ask.

Anna Sitz’s Pagan Inscriptions, Christian Viewers offers a stimulating and meticulously researched exploration into a frequently overlooked facet of Late Antiquity: the complex afterlives of inscriptions, primarily those associated with pagan temples, within a progressively Christianizing eastern Mediterranean. As postulated in the Introduction and brought out throughout the rest of the monograph, this study carries on the recent momentum of moving beyond the focus on an inscription’s moment of creation, arguing persuasively that these inscribed stones were not merely passive remnants of a bygone era. Instead, Sitz posits that they were “active agents” (6) that continued to shape perceptions of the past, elicit diverse responses, and participate in the cultural and religious transformations of the 4th to 7th c. CE (more on “agency” in this study below). The volume is a significant contribution, compelling scholars to consider the full “biography” of inscriptions and their dynamic interaction with changing societal landscapes.

The book is thoughtfully structured. Chapter 1 (“Introduction: Afterlives of inscriptions”) lays out the conceptual framework, challenging the notion of inscriptions as static historical documents and introducing the spectrum of fates they could meet. This initial chapter also touches upon the complexities of literacy in Late Antiquity (17–20), a crucial consideration for understanding who the “Christian viewers” might have been and how they accessed the textual content of these monuments. Sitz acknowledges the difficulty in reconstructing literacy rates but rightly emphasizes that even limited literacy within a community allows for the dissemination of textual information.

Chapter 2 (“The use of real or imagined inscriptions in Late Antique literature”) provides an essential foundation by demonstrating the multifaceted ways in which Late Antique individuals – from historians and hagiographers to compilers of oracles – engaged with inscribed texts, both authentic and fictitious. Sitz adeptly shows how authors like Agathias (34–38), Kosmas Indikopleustes (38–43), and the anonymous author of the Vita Abercii (52–65) not only read and recorded older inscriptions but also reinterpreted, appropriated, and even fabricated them to serve contemporary narrative, theological, or historical purposes. Her application of “transtextuality” (29) cogently illuminates how these ancient texts were woven into new meaning-making frameworks, contributing to a Christian “world-building project” while simultaneously revealing ongoing engagement with the classical past. This chapter convincingly establishes that ancient inscriptions remained potent sources of authority and material for creative adaptation, though one might ask how confidently these literary tropes (e.g., prophetic readings of inscriptions) can be mapped onto the physical treatment of inscriptions observed archaeologically in subsequent chapters, and whose literate perspective – elite, clerical, or other – is predominantly reflected in these literary engagements.

The subsequent three chapters delve into the archaeological evidence for the physical afterlives of temple inscriptions, categorized by their predominant fate. Chapter 3 (“Preservation: Tolerating temples and their texts”) challenges narratives of inevitable destruction or neglect. Sitz argues that the preservation of pagan temples and their inscriptions was often a conscious choice, influenced by the textual content itself. She posits that the frequently “civic” rather than overtly cultic nature of these texts – celebrating emperors, local euergetes, and civic achievements – rendered them less offensive and sometimes even desirable within Christianizing cityscapes (15–17, 69). Compelling case studies from Ephesos (the “Temple of Hadrian,” 74–77), Priene (Temple of Athena Polias with its Alexander dedication, 77–84), Mylasa (Temple of Augustus and Roma, 84–88), and, notably, Ankara (the Temple of Augustus and Roma with the Res Gestae, 95–113) illustrate this point. Sitz’s argument that the imperial prestige embodied in the Res Gestae likely contributed to the Ankara temple’s preservation and potential conversion into a church, aligning with evolving Christian views of Augustan history, is particularly noteworthy.

Chapter 4 (“Spoliation: Integrating and scrambling inscriptions”) addresses the widespread practice of reusing ancient building materials. Sitz navigates the enduring debate between pragmatic and ideological interpretations of spolia with considerable nuance, moving beyond a simple dichotomy. While acknowledging the practical impetus behind much reuse,Footnote ¹ she presents compelling instances where builders appear to have consciously engaged with the verbal content of inscribed blocks. The careful re-erection of the inscribed anta listing priests at the Korykian Cave clifftop temple-church, preserving the text even when partially obscured (155–65), is a striking example. Similarly, at the Temple-church in Aphrodisias, dedications to Aphrodite on columns remained visible, while an architrave honoring Augustus was prominently displayed (172–83). Sitz introduces the useful concept of “scrambling” texts (e.g., at Sagalassos, 165–72; Church of Mary, Ephesos, 152), where the deliberate disarrangement of inscribed blocks could de-semanticize potentially problematic pagan content while still allowing the prestigious ancient material to be showcased. The inclusion of Hellenistic decrees and an enigmatic epichoric text in the Sardis synagogue (188–91) further demonstrates that meaningful reuse of inscribed spolia was not exclusive to Christian contexts. This chapter successfully argues that the act of spoliation could itself be a form of active reinterpretation and display. The methodological challenge, as ever with spolia, lies in discerning the specific intent behind reuse patterns from the archaeological record alone, and distinguishing content-driven choices from aesthetic preferences or structural convenience.

The final chapter 5, “Erasure: [[damnatio memoriae]] or conscious uncoupling?” examines the most direct form of textual intervention. Sitz carefully differentiates the Roman political practice of damnatio memoriae from what she characterizes as a distinct Late Antique phenomenon of “unnaming” pagan gods and their priestly associates (202–4, 218–20). This “unnaming,” achieved through selective and often meticulous erasure, primarily aimed not at perpetual shaming (as often in damnatio memoriae) but at creating a critical distance from the pagan past. By rendering problematic entities anonymous, communities could often preserve the underlying civic or historical record. The detailed analyses of erasures at Aphrodisias (the Archive Wall, the Zoilos lintel, 225), Aizanoi (the Artemis architrave, 236–40), and Labraunda (the South Propylaea architrave, 232–35) are particularly insightful. Sitz highlights how factors such as an inscription’s prominence and accessibility, and the specific divine names involved, influenced the decision to erase.Footnote ² A crucial distinction is drawn between the treatment of inscriptions and of statues, with the latter often perceived as possessing a form of animacy, being more susceptible to direct physical violence (iconoclasm), while inscriptions were more commonly subjected to careful textual surgery (“grammatoclasm,” 258).Footnote ³ The question remains whether this “conscious uncoupling” was a widespread strategy or one reserved for particularly significant or problematic texts, and how consistently it was applied across different regions and timeframes within Late Antiquity.

To finish off with the usual scaffolding of a review article before we proceed to more interesting parts, style, presentation, and treatment of technical detail is on a high level. It is even more impressive that the narrative tone is engaging, and makes technicalities (without omitting them too much) readily accessible to a non-expert reader. Lastly, a remark on something that was beyond the author’s remit, and so has no direct bearing on the content of the book, but remains (at least to some) an essential part of a book’s experience. While the pressures of keeping the publication costs down (with the retail price of the reviewed monograph still impressively high) as well as the necessity of using acid-free paper are real and understandable, the physical quality of the book represents a slip compared even to other OUP series. While one cannot reasonably expect letterpress printing anymore, the new series, of which the book is part,Footnote ⁴ gives up on the traditional dark navy cloth covers for whitish cardboard versions, to say nothing of the midrange laser printer feel of the pages (something which is increasingly ubiquitous even among upmarket academic publishers). With staff costs, not materials, the dominating factor in the retail price, do we absolutely have to do this?Footnote ⁵

Now that we have a bird’s eye view of the key things that the monograph does, it is probably time to look at what it does not. Although this sounds like an entirely unfair, and almost irrelevant, thing to do, this is what, I believe, studies of consequence enable, and ask for. A highly erudite and synthetic monograph, Sitz’s study leaves us in a changed epistemological terrain compared to where we were before reading it. From this new vista, new questions can be asked, and old ones reconsidered. In what follows, I will only address two sets of such questions. The first concerns the ever-popular issue of epigraphic spoliation, as treated in Chapter 4, and its broader context of Late Antique reuse as part of urban change. The second is about social agency, and how much of it is recoverable from the archaeological record, including Late Antique inscriptions, and things that happened (or did not) to earlier inscriptions in Late Antiquity.

Sitz’s qualitative, case-study methodology provides profound insights into how and why specific inscriptions were re-used. The author’s argument develops through a deliberate and carefully selected (if sufficiently wide) corpus of predominantly temple-related monuments. Overall, in Chapter 4, Sitz focuses on seven key monuments while giving parallels from a further eight (if I am not miscalculating); the total number of the re-used inscriptions discussed is just over three dozen. Even without going hardcore quantitative, these are tiny numbers in the vast sea of the epigraphic record available to Late Antique “viewers” and other “users” of earlier epigraphy. This naturally prompts consideration of the broader epigraphic landscape – the “silent majority” of inscriptions whose afterlives might tell a different, or complementary, story. While Sitz acknowledges the limitations of her scope (23), the question of representativeness for larger trends remains pertinent.

Late Antiquity witnessed epigraphic recycling on an immense scale, particularly in the construction of new civic and defensive infrastructure; honorific bases and funerary stelae were primarily targeted.Footnote ⁶ For instance, about 10 percent of materials reused in the fortifications at Hierapolis came from necropoleis; prominent honorific inscriptions, including for emperors, ended up as elements of the newly erected city gates.Footnote ⁷ The walls of Ankara saw a systematic (and essentially neglected) reuse of dozens of honorific and funerary inscriptions of an Imperial date.Footnote ⁸ At least a couple of dozen inscribed stelae are in secondary use in a rampart at Xanthos.Footnote ⁹ Over 130 inscribed blocks were reused in fortifications at Apamea.Footnote ¹⁰ The mid-4th-c. city walls of Aphrodisias incorporated approximately 450 reused inscriptions, of which about two-thirds are funerary, and over a hundred honorific.Footnote ¹¹ These figures, representing just a handful of sites, point to a widespread phenomenon, where thousands of primarily 1st- to 3rd-c. CE civic and funerary and honorific monuments were treated as readily available building materials. In many of these large-scale reuse projects, the textual content of the inscriptions appears to have been secondary to their material utility, with variable regard for the visibility or integrity of the original text.

This larger statistical picture offers a complementary perspective to Sitz’s findings. The numbers point towards what may be termed an “operative erasure” of physical bearers of collective memory – funerary and honorific epigraphy.Footnote ¹² The sheer volume of those absorbed into new constructions suggests a widespread phenomenon, where past civic memories embodied in stone became functionally obsolete for many. This does not diminish the significance of the ideologically charged interactions that Sitz highlights but rather situates them within a broader landscape of monumental transformation, where pragmatic concerns and shifting cultural relevancies of local elites likely dictated the “normal fate” of a vast number of less distinguished, or less ideologically potent, inscribed stones.Footnote ¹³

A very brief overview of a specific site may bring these broader considerations closer to home. One of the key monuments in Chapter 4 is the Temple-Church at Aphrodisias, which Sitz addressed in two earlier journal articles.Footnote ¹⁴ Converted into the city’s cathedral at some point in the late 5th c., the Temple-Church features a number of Imperial-epoch inscriptions. These were moved, rather than removed, as part of the complex’s massive architectural overhaul, with more brought from elsewhere in the city, it seems. Sitz mentions (in the articles and the book) 10 reused inscriptions altogether while focusing on fewer (primarily donors’ tabulae ansatae on columns and other dedicatory inscriptions such as C. Julius Zoilus’s). These are not, however, the numerically dominant corpus of Imperial epigraphy reused in the Late Antique church: honorific bases are. Those bases reused as part of early Byzantine altar installations are collectively referred to by Sitz, mainly to be dismissed as missing archaeological contexts of reuse;Footnote ¹⁵ the latter is not quite correct. As the field notebook of 1961 documents,Footnote ¹⁶ four 2nd-c. CE statue bases were in fact found in situ or in immediate proximity to the north part of the newly erected altar stylobate, where they were reused as support for the columns of the templon (which may or may not have been correctly dated, and reconstructed, in the recent book by Hugh Jeffery).Footnote ¹⁷ This and subsequent field notebooks also show that at least 33 honorific bases were reused in the Temple-Church (21 published and 12 unpublished); these merit a dedicated new study of the entire monument and its spoliation patterns. Although we do not know how, or where specifically, these dozens of honorific bases were used,Footnote ¹⁸ they constituted the bulk of epigraphic spoliation in the Late Antique Temple-Church. Most likely, they were reused as structural elements, never to be seen: the invisible and silent majority, not the eloquent minority.Footnote ¹⁹ Given that the Temple-Church has become a veritable touchstone for studies of Late Antique temple conversion, and arguably one of the most studied instances of epigraphic spoliation, this inversion of numerical perspectives could have broader implications for how we understand both processes. Exploring this dynamic – the relationship between the carefully curated afterlives of some inscriptions and the more anonymous consumption of the many – would allow for a richer, more textured understanding of memory, identity, and material culture in this pivotal period.

There are two further aspects of the book’s overall methodology that may benefit, I believe, from a broader consideration. Both concern agency, as this concept looms behind the analytical tackle of the book while only seldom coming into explicit focus.Footnote ²⁰ As a matter of fact, agency is also encoded in the title of the book, which speaks of “viewers.”Footnote ²¹ A totally different book featuring viewing and visibility in its title could have been written about Late Antique epigraphy, given the recent titles explicitly engaging with visibility and its various implications, all the way through to cognitive approaches.Footnote ²² Not following this path may not have been Sitz’s self-conscious methodological choice; it is, however, a practical choice, which allows a flexible, and firmer, grip on variegated historical and archaeological contexts rather than diluting their texture in fashionably advanced methodologies that do not, in and of themselves, guarantee deeper insights.Footnote ²³

This thematic and geographic range, however, has a different side to it, too: the types of viewers/readers do tend to be effectively assumed as coherent across the many – and, often, quite different – archaeological and historical contexts that Sitz’s study spans. Are Agathias and Kosmas fundamentally the same sort of viewers/readers as those readerships that could have made sense of the many remaining “pagan” inscriptions discussed elsewhere in the book? Chapter 2 summarily suggests that tolerance was practiced towards these presumably non-Christian-looking inscriptions, but who were the agents of exercising that tolerance? We, of course, do not know (and Sitz never suggests we do). An anonymous potential viewership that allows for pagan inscriptions to linger implies, however, some sort of Christian majority. I am not convinced that Agathias, or even Kosmas, as writers and pepaideumenoi (even if of distinct softs) are part of that vast majority; their take on – and interest in – inscriptions would be, sociologically, an exception. Could tolerance towards inscriptions invested with civic perceptions of idealized past emperors (such as the Res gestae at Ankara) have a simpler rationale? Could most people have just not cared enough to even bother deforming and removing “pagan” epigraphy (leaving aside the question of how much this indifference has to do with literacy)? I understand that I directly challenge the interpretation that the author develops in Chapter 2, which specifically stipulates that “tolerating is not the same thing as ignoring” (73).

I would suggest that Agathias and Kosmas may be on a more meaningfully similar sociological footing with individuals like Eunapios’s Chrysanthios and the resolutely yet secretly pagan local elites at Sardis. These elites may or may have not orchestrated the re-arrangement of the Nannas Bakivalis monument (126 ff.); it is as much an account of an archaeological “Schrödinger’s cat” (113) as that of the Temple of Augustus at Ankara, as are most of the monuments discussed in Chapter 2. In contexts like this, however, we may have at least glimpses of historical and sociological facts and details that are mostly missing from the other discussions of the potential meaningfulness of absence of removal of “pagan” inscriptions (how far removed is this logic itself from argumentum ex silentio, however?), which are interpreted as tolerance. This reviewer also wishes that the rare cases when we do have tangible bits of historical detail had been developed further, as they can shed light on sociological agency in structuring the Late Antique epigraphic landscape, such as the inscribing of Fl. Illus Pusaeus Dionysios’s Forma generalis at Mylasa (86). This, I believe, would enable a significantly more textured discussion of actors shaping viewership, and, potentially, provide insights into how specifically epigraphic (in)tolerance played out. True, this would probably mostly leave us in the all-too-familiar milieu of imperial and local elites, from which one feels a natural urge to break away; however, are these elites in Late Antique eastern regions such as Asia Minor, for instance, all that well-studied and trivial (not the former, for sure)? Interestingly, when the author looks for a finer-grained contextualization of agency and viewership of the inscribed Res gestae at Ankara, she does speculate (insightfully, I would say) about their potential reception by Greek-speaking elites, such as the praetorian prefect Saturninius Secundus in the mid-4th c. (106) (but also by the poet Giorgos Seferis in mid-20th c., on p. 265). One stops short of wondering (or maybe one should not) whether local and imperial elites in Late Antiquity were indeed the only ones who cared enough about inscriptions, and had the means to promote and demote them. Were they the only real viewers we can reliably speak of (or the only ones in the first place)? Do we (yet) possess methodologies to look beyond these sociological strata, as much as we would like to?

To reiterate: these, as well as the other things above, are questions spurred by this fascinating study, which is exactly what good books do. To address them, more books have to be written. Anna Sitz has produced a brilliant and innovative study that re-centers inscribed objects within the cultural and religious currents of Late Antiquity. Pagan Inscriptions, Christian Viewers challenges epigraphers and historians of the later Roman empire alike to consider the long and varied lives of inscribed texts. Sitz’s nuanced readings of literary and archaeological evidence provide a crucial framework for understanding how the pagan past was not simply discarded but actively reinterpreted, preserved, and transformed. The book will undoubtedly become a cornerstone for all future studies on the fate of epigraphy in a world of transition, prompting further investigation into the full spectrum of these monumental afterlives, from the most consciously curated to the most casually consumed.