A handbook of Latin epigraphy is not only a reference book intended as a research tool for students and scholars, but also a way of giving the scholarly community an idea of what, in the author's mind, is ‘the place of Latin inscriptions in the Roman world’, and how Latin Epigraphy should be approached. This is C.'s goal, whose principal aim is to provide a useful guide for those who want to learn more about Latin inscriptions, but at the same time give a new, updated concept of this subject as a whole.
The book opens with a survey of the epigraphic material known from the area of the Bay of Naples, chosen for its great variety of examples, including not only the traditional honorific and funerary inscriptions – both pagan and Christian – but also writing tablets, inscribed instrumentum and graffiti. This first chapter immediately provides the reader with a very good idea of the great number of possibilities provided by these kinds of documents. In the second chapter C. faces the traditional but never totally solved problem of defining epigraphy and dividing up inscriptions into different categories, classifying the different kinds of texts and artefacts included in this subject.
Considering the potential and the limitations of different definitions (based on characteristics such as durability, method of writing and so on) leads to the conclusion that epigraphy is a ‘subdiscipline created by convenience and compromise’. It is certainly true that to understand epigraphic culture it is essential to recognise the permeability of the boundaries between writing that has been preserved on all kinds of media, but defining the object of the study of epigraphers is perhaps not so difficult. This is, at least, what S. Panciera has recently tried to do, in ‘What is an Inscription? Problems of Definition and Identity of an Historical Source’ (ZPE 183 [2012], 1–10), defining an inscription as ‘any particular type of written human communication of the sort that we would today called unidirectional, in the sense that it does not anticipate that a response will be provided to the sender, and which for this reason is made with the location, writing technique, graphic form and impagination, mode and register of expression chosen because they are most suitable to the attainment of its intended goal, and which differentiates itself in this manner from other forms of contemporary verbal communication’.
Corresponding to the wide range of ‘categories’ into which epigraphic material can be divided, C. gives a great variety of examples – each one is transcribed, translated, commented on and illustrated with photographs – including not only well-known cases like epitaphs, and honorific and building inscriptions, but also a rich treatment of some usually under-represented categories such as texts carved directly onto rocks and mountains.
I appreciated the way in which the birth of Christian epigraphy is described, underlying the different needs and issues related to this kind of material, but also the close relationship, at the beginning of this process, between pagan and Christian inscriptions (according to the steps outlined by C. Carletti in many of his studies, including ‘L'origine della prassi epigrafica dei cristiani nell'area ravennate: mitografia e realtà storica’, in G. Cuscito [ed.], La cristianizzazione dell'Adriatico [Antichità Altoadriatiche 66] [2008], pp. 127–49). This is particularly clear, for example, in the case study of an epitaph for a Christian, opening with the dedication D(is) M(anibus) (recently re-published by C. Noviello, in Museo Nazionale Romano alle Terme di Diocleziano: la collezione epigrafica [2012], pp. 568–9, no. IX, 24).
C. correctly pays much attention to the concept that an inscription is first of all an inscribed monument, more than a document, and to the importance of the context in which the inscribed monument is displayed. As a significant case study of this particular aspect C. chooses the inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania, with different materials coming from urban spaces and the rural environment, and where the coexistence of different cultures generates, for example, bilingual inscriptions. All this is made easier since we have at our disposal the online version of the Tripolitania inscriptions by J.M. Reynolds and J.B. Ward-Perkins (to which one may add the recent study by I. Tantillo and F. Bigi [edd.], Leptis Magna. Una città e le sue iscrizioni in epoca tardoromana [2010]).
Interesting observations are made about the relationship between writing and reading inscriptions, and different grades of ancient literacy (well synthesised by the concept of ‘semi-literate’ given by G. Cavallo, ‘Gli usi della cultura scritta nel mondo romano’, in Princeps urbium. Cultura e vita sociale dell'Italia romana [1991], pp. 171–251, esp. 201); attention is also given to interventions aimed to correct, update or erase an inscription or part of it, with particular emphasis on damnatio memoriae and the reuse of inscribed materials both in pagan and in Christian contexts.
One of the most original and useful parts of the manual is the ‘technical guide’ on how to use the most important reference books and specialist publications on epigraphy, and especially the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, both in its old, nineteenth-century edition and in its new version, with the supplements of CIL II and CIL VI published in the last decades. The same attention is also given to the main digital projects related to Latin epigraphy, including the large epigraphic online databases and the texts already published (or that will be published) using EpiDoc as the encoding language.
As well as a precise glossary of the terms to be found in the lemmata of the CIL (descripsi: ‘I have seen and drawn up a previously unpublished inscription’, recognovi: ‘I have checked an already published inscription by autopsy’, and so on), due space is also given to the sometimes neglected stemma codicum, underlining the importance of a careful and critical study of epigraphic manuscripts and ancient printed editions.
A useful list of the tools needed by an epigrapher at work (not only a notebook with pencil and rubber, but also a tape measure, a torch, a feather-duster, etc.) gives a good impression of the importance of the ‘on site’ job, face to face with the inscription, alongside study in a library.
Many pages are devoted to the subject of epigraphic forgeries and forgers and, not surprisingly, to the different dating criteria, both ancient (ab urbe condita, anno regni and so on) and modern. Among them, palaeography is described with its regional and technical differences, focusing also on its limits, as is clearly shown by the discussion of the chronology of the inscriptions of the P. Lucilii Gamalae family from Ostia.
The book ends with an interesting example of a re-edition of an already published text, in which the job of the epigrapher is followed step by step, from the identification of the inscription, to the finding of the present location, the direct analysis of the stone, the careful study of previous bibliography, and finally the new reconstruction of the text, showing that not only new findings but also epigraphic materials known for a long time have always something new to say, if only we read them with new eyes.
