Parallel sessions are intended to collect 20-minute presentations. The selection of these presentations will be made by the session chairs in coordination with the Scientific Committee of the Congress.
Proposals may be submitted according to the procedures outlined in the II Circular to: ciegl2027@unibo.it.
Chairs: Fatih Onur, Sebastian Prignitz
Ongoing excavations, field surveys, the systematic study of museum collections, and occasional chance discoveries outside formal archaeological contexts continue to bring to light new inscriptions. Against this background, the session TITVLI NOVI GRAECI is dedicated to the presentation and analysis of previously unpublished Greek inscriptions, as well as newly reconstructed texts from old and / or new fragments. Thus, it will provide a forum for the introduction of new texts into scholarly discussion and for the establishment of their content and interpretation.
Contributions should deal with inscriptions not yet published (or not yet reconstructed in the way they as are now) in any form. Fragmentary texts with substantial preserved lettering are welcome. Reassessment of known material is admissible where it leads to the identification of an effectively new inscriptional text. Papers may address epigraphic, linguistic, and contextual aspects arising directly from the unpublished material. Methodological considerations are welcome insofar as they serve the analysis of new inscriptions.
By concentrating on unpublished material, the session underscores the fundamental role of tituli novi in the advancement of Greek epigraphy and promotes rigorous standards of documentation, analysis, and publication.
[ .pdf 364Kb ]
Chairs: Simona Antolini, Nicolas Tran
Comme sa consoeur grecque, l’épigraphie latine étudie un large corpus documentaire, de plusieurs centaines de milliers de textes et de monuments. Il s’enrichit d’année en année, au fil des découvertes. Ces nouvelles inscriptions constituent des sources primaires, originales, qui viennent consolider et parfois infléchir la connaissance historique de la Rome antique, de l’Empire romain et des sociétés qui le peuplaient. La session parallèle des TITVLI NOVI LATINI sera l’occasion de faire découvrir des inscriptions latines inédites à la communauté des épigraphistes. Toutes les propositions sont les bienvenues, quels que soient les supports et la catégorie des textes inscrits, dès débuts de Rome jusqu’à l’Antiquité Tardive. Des textes gravés en plusieurs langues, parmi lesquelles le latin tient une place prépondérante, pourront être présentés.
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L’epigrafia latina, al pari di quella in lingua greca, studia un ampio corpus documentario, composto da diverse centinaia di migliaia di testi e monumenti, che si arricchisce di anno in anno con le nuove scoperte. Queste nuove iscrizioni costituiscono fonti primarie, originali, che vengono a consolidare e talvolta anche a modificare la conoscenza storica dell’antica Roma, dell’Impero romano e delle società che vi abitavano. La sessione parallela dei TITVLI NOVI LATINI costituirà l’occasione per far conoscere alla comunità degli epigrafisti iscrizioni latine inedite. Sono benvenute proposte di diverso tipo, indipendentemente dal supporto e dalla categoria epigrafica, dalle origini di Roma fino alla tarda antichità. Potranno essere presentati testi incisi in diverse lingue, purché il latino abbia un ruolo preponderante.
[ .pdf 365Kb ]
Chairs: John Bodel, Thea Sommerschield
Over the past decade, research at the intersection of epigraphy and Artificial Intelligence (AI) has expanded at an unprecedented pace. Advances in OCR and Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) have enabled large-scale, multi-modal recognition of characters in Greek papyri and inscriptions, supporting new forms of palaeographic analysis.
Transformer-based machine learning models developed across successive generations have demonstrated the potential of AI for epigraphic parallel retrieval, text restoration, geographical attribution, and dating of Greek and Latin inscriptions. Meanwhile, topic modeling and other NLP techniques have contributed to genre attribution and document classification in large epigraphic corpora, while generative AI has been used to create synthetic characters in Greek papyri and Cuneiform tablets as a way of addressing the problem of unbalanced and scarce training data.
This parallel session at CIEGL 2027 invites contributions that critically examine how machine learning and statistical methods can advance the study of inscriptions in Greek, Latin, and other languages of the ancient Mediterranean world. We are interested both in technical developments and in their implications for epigraphic scholarship, interpretation, and pedagogy, including how generative AI and linked data infrastructures are reshaping research, teaching, and publication practices.
We welcome submissions on topics related to, but not limited to:
- Digitisation: bringing textual sources to a high-quality machine-readable format (e.g., through HTR), including image-to-text pipelines and multimodal approaches.
- Decipherment and translation: computational approaches aiming to make an inscription’s language comprehensible and interpretable to modern-day researchers.
- Restoration: recovering missing text and reassembling fragmented written artefacts.
- Attribution and Retrieval: situating inscriptions within their original geographical, chronological, cultural and authorial contexts.
- Linguistic analysis: including segmentation, POS-tagging, parsing, embeddings, representation learning, semantics, and sentiment analysis.
- Data, standards, and evaluation: position papers on dataset quality and quantity, human-in-the-loop experimental protocols, reproducibility, linked data for downstream machine learning tasks, and sustainable infrastructures.
- Bias, generalisation, and trust: critical reflection on imbalanced datasets, data circularity, ground-truth construction, uncertainty modelling, mitigation strategies, gold standards, and the interpretability and explainability of AI systems.
- Interdisciplinary practice: studies of collaboration between epigraphists, computer scientists, and cultural heritage institutions, including reflections on the funding landscape and pedagogical approaches to GenAI for epigraphy in schools and universities.
Submissions should present substantive, empirically grounded work. We invite proof-of-concept papers only if they include statistically meaningful and verifiable results and new datasets only when accompanied by significant methodological discussion or critical analysis. Where applicable, papers should clearly state datasets used, evaluation metrics, baselines, and limitations.
We welcome submissions that integrate epigraphic and historical expertise with computational methods, and that reflect critically on how AI can be used responsibly, transparently, and productively in epigraphy. We particularly encourage papers that show how interdisciplinary collaboration can improve both the reliability of AI tools and their interpretive value for the study of the ancient world.
[ .pdf 439Kb ]
Chairs: Rebecca Benefiel, Daniela Marchiandi
Although inscriptions are one of the most revealing sources for reconstructing the history of the ancient world, they remain among the most difficult archaeological materials to enhance and communicate to the non-specialist public. This is unequivocally demonstrated by the lapidaria in museums around the world, both in traditional displays and in more recent and carefully considered displays from a museographic point of view: inscriptions almost always receive little or no attention from non-specialist visitors, even when accompanied by a translation. On the other hand, the fate of inscriptions left in situ in archaeological areas is no better: exhibited in reserved spaces or scattered among monuments, with the virtuous aim of enhancing their original display site, they usually end up ignored or functioning as benches for tired tourists.
Even in the scholarly world, the challenges for non-epigraphers in understanding the evidence of epigraphy can go unrecognized. A scholar might find the text of an inscription and, by missing the nature of the inscribed monument or the size and presentation of an inscription, misinterpret how the inscribed message was intended or was received by an ancient reader. Greek and Roman epigraphy consists, in fact, of numerous different classes of inscriptions which are not immediately understandable even to Classicists and ancient historians.
It is clear, however, that epigraphs constitute an unparalleled historical source because they preserve a direct voice from the past. Whether they are the result of a joint decision, a financial document, a religious regulation, a funerary epitaph, a votive dedication or graffiti, to mention just a few of the most well-known types, inscriptions show with rare effectiveness the practices of ancient life. They share with literature the eloquence of texts, but they also convey the immediacy of everyday life with a unique and entirely distinctive vividness.
Neglecting inscriptions, therefore, when visiting a museum or archaeological site, is not only a serious gap from an epistemological point of view, but also a missed opportunity to offer the general public a powerful glimpse of the ancient world. This is even more paradoxical when one considers the great interest and uncommon sensitivity that visitors usually show towards epigraphic content when it is adequately explained to them (as we have all experienced). What strikes the non-specialist public are the most diverse aspects, for example, the universality of the feelings that private epigraphy often conveys, or the unexpected complexity of institutions in the ancient world, as can be deduced from public epigraphy.
At a time when the study of the classics is experiencing a rapid and seemingly irreversible decline everywhere, we believe that communicating epigraphy to nonspecialists can be a crucial and still under-exploited resource. The situation, in fact, requires us to move away from a sometimes overly elitist view of the discipline, which has long remained the monopoly of a small minority of scholars, so that inscriptions can become a cultural heritage fully shared by the entire community, even outside the strictly academic sphere. We are confident that this kind of openness will breathe new life into scientific and specialist research on inscriptions, but also significantly stimulate, especially among the younger generations, a renewed interest in the study of classical languages and the civilisations that produced them.
This panel therefore aims to present contributions that explore how best to disseminate and present epigraphy to a non-specialist public (visitors, students of all levels, scholars in related fields, etc.), either in ongoing or future projects, and in all their many possible forms.
Papers may consider, for example:
- projects whose design aims to reduce barriers to understanding a specific corpus of epigraphy;
- projects that consider audience engagement or highlight communicating the relevance/importance/unique views provided by epigraphy;
- projects for the enhancement and communication in the digital environment of inscriptions preserved in museums or archaeological sites, linked, for example, to narrative content (digital storytelling technologies) or to the topographical and monumental contexts in which they were originally displayed (digital space representation technologies, such as interactive maps, geolocation-based apps, etc.);
- virtual exhibition projects focused on a monographic theme, capable of raising public awareness of socially significant issues;
- virtual tour projects focused on inscriptions, to be enjoyed in modern city spaces, outside archaeological sites.
[ .pdf 465Kb ]
Chairs: Alison Cooley, Simona Stoyanova
The aim of this panel is to explore some of the challenges presented by teaching epigraphy to students in different contexts, whether as part of a module within undergraduate or postgraduate curricula, or in museums and on sites. How can we engage students at all levels with all kinds of epigraphy? Do some types of inscriptions pose particular challenges? How can we go beyond a text-based training? How can we ensure that scholars of the future are trained in the specific requirements of epigraphic scholarship – how to edit new texts and reinterpret old ones – as well as in the necessary historical, philological, archaeological, and digital skills?
It will give us the opportunity to exchange ideas and best practice about how to engage students in epigraphy, how to deal with linguistic challenges when students may not know much, or any, Latin and Greek, let alone other ancient languages. We will consider how to bring inscriptions off the page, so that their monumental appearance is evaluated as much as their textual content. Other issues might include how to introduce students to electronic corpora and databases, approaches to EpiDoc training and the use of AI tools. We will also explore how initiatives stemming from research projects, both national and international, can transform access to materials and resources and influence policy, and gradually become part of accredited national curricula.
We would welcome posters (particularly from students) as part of the panel, outlining their experiences of being taught epigraphy, and intend to include time for discussion of these within the framework of the session.
As a complementary aspect of the panel, we would also like to expand the scope of the British Epigraphy Society’s ‘School Resources’ to include resources for teaching in universities too, and would encourage everyone who attends the panel to contribute ideas and links.
[ .pdf 178Kb ]
Chairs: Alex Mullen, Dimitar Iliev
Numerous non-Greek and Latin epigraphies inhabited the ancient world and interacted with Graeco-Roman epigraphic culture, from the Celtic curse tablets in Rome’s most northerly province, to Punic brick stamps from north Africa, Tartessian stone inscriptions by the Atlantic, and Prakrit on coinage from north-western India. Local language epigraphies have been a focus of several recent research projects (e.g. Hesperia, CPI, CREWS, Crossreads, LatinNow, Prometheus, RIIG, The Epigraphic Corpus of Georgia) and scholarly networks (e.g. AELAW), and we now have at our disposal both a wealth of digital resources and a range of methodologies combining archaeological, historical, and sociolinguistic perspectives. Research into these epigraphies is essential for understanding the nature of local communities, types of linguistic and cultural contacts, and in turn the development of regional variants of Latin and Greek epigraphy.
In this panel we take a contextualized view of the diverse ancient epigraphic landscapes and seek to explore the areas of overlap and influences between epigraphies, evidence for linguistic interaction, and representations of various forms of identities at individual and community level. Who created, developed and participated in these epichoric epigraphies, when, and for what purposes, for example can we recover the social statuses and motivations of inscribers of the languages of pre-imperial Italy? Why did some ancient communities reject these modes altogether, choosing either exclusively Graeco-Roman forms of expression, for example in Thrace, or to remain anepigraphic, for example in parts of northwestern Britain and Gaul? How does imagery and materiality serve communicative purposes in these cultures, in dialogue or otherwise with ‘Classical’ practices, for example in the development of distinctive tombstone imagery in Macedonia? How do we recover the modalities of local literacy through sometimes highly fragmentary corpora and counter the traditionally held view that the end of epigraphic outputs necessarily correlates with the loss of the languages represented, for example with the supposed death of Palaeohispanic languages in the Augustan period? This panel will showcase ways in which we can understand cultural entanglements, and recover details of ancient life and languages, diverse voices and perspectives, and aspects of local histories across time and space.
We welcome submissions involving any epichoric epigraphies from the ancient world, especially those that integrate new material and interpretations. Papers should offer well-contextualized arguments and should be made accessible to those who may not be expert in the specific languages/corpora.
[ .pdf 354Kb ]
Chairs: Antonio Felle, Muriel Moser-Gerber
About thirty years ago, at the 11th International Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy in Rome in 1997, D. Feissel observed that “l’épigraphie de l’antiquité tardive n’est plus… le parent pauvre qu’elle fut.” It was at this same meeting that Silvio Panciera established – for the first time - a section dedicated especially to the Greek and Latin Epigraphy after Constantine. Dedicated sessions for the epigraphy of Late Antiquity (disappeared in the successive three international epigraphy congresses: Barcelona 2002, Oxford 2007, Berlin 2012), were brought back to life in 2017 in Vienna (Late Antique and Byzantine Epigraphy), and in 2022 in Bordeaux (Epigraphic traditions after the reign of Diocletian).
The approach taken at the 1997 epigraphy congress in Rome, namely Greek and Latin Epigraphy after Constantine, appears to consider the beginning of Late Antique epigraphy as coinciding with the inception of a Christian Empire: Silvio Panciera also opened to way to regarding the religious element as a particularly important aspect of the epigraphy of this period. This has helped in deconstructing the obsolete and misleading artificial separation of the Early Christian inscriptions from the general frame of Late Antique epigraphy, as efficiently synthesized also by A.E. Cooley: “The rooting and growth of Christianity in the Roman Empire was the catalyst for many significant changes in political ideology, society, and culture that together created the distinctive character of the period now known as ‘late antiquity’” (Cooley 2012, p. 228). In addition, it is beyond doubt that the Early Christian epigraphy of Late Antiquity constitutes the foundation of what may be defined as “Christian epigraphy” proper—that is, Byzantine epigraphy in the East and medieval epigraphy in the West. These epigraphic traditions possess little substance outside the religious sphere, as can be observed in Coptic, pre-Islamic, and early Islamic inscriptions, as well as—within Europe— in Anglo-Saxon and Gothic examples.
Indeed, not only the rise of Christianity, but also migrations and the consequent postclassical cultures – also in languages other than Greek and Latin - did not only transform the world of Classical Antiquity, but also the usual epigraphic habit. New contents, forms and rules were applied, other players, languages and audiences involved, new locations, objects and contexts used. What, then, is post-classical epigraphy, and where do we find it? This session about the epigraphic cultures of the Post-Classical world, from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, seeks to offer a window into the rich field of late-antique, Byzantine and Medieval epigraphic phenomena with a view to highlight the added value of studying these “late” transformations also for the analysis of “Classical” Greek and Latin inscriptions. We therefore invite contributions on the epigraphic habit of late-antique, Byzantine and Medieval communities (4th to 13th centuries). Papers tracing «transformation» in respect of Classical epigraphy, also in languages and communities other than Greek and Latin, are particularly welcome.
[ .pdf 360Kb ]
Chairs: Alejandra Guzmán Almagro, William Stenhouse
The pioneering nineteenth-century editors of CIL and IG made clear the importance of earlier copyists of inscriptions to their work. They included lists of auctores – previous testimonia – both for individual regions or sites and at the beginning of volumes, and recorded details of previous witnesses in the apparatus for each entry. For monuments that are now lost or damaged, the evidence preserved by these earlier witnesses – whether in handwritten copies, drawings, or printed works – is often invaluable.
Despite the priorities of the original corpora editors – or, perhaps, because of their success in combing the work of their predecessors – questions of reception and transmission became less central to the work of epigraphers in the course of the twentieth century. In the last generation, however, scholars have increasingly returned to the study of how inscriptions were recorded, circulated, edited, and reused across time, showing how attention to earlier phases of transmission can reveal new details of individual texts and illuminate broader methodological issues.
This section proposes to approach epigraphy’s history by focusing particularly on the importance of handwritten copies in the transmission of information about inscriptions. Why, for example, did the copyists consulted by nineteenth-century editors make their transcriptions? How can we relate hand-copied texts to their appearance in print and other media? What has been the role of artists and professional draftsmen in preserving inscriptions? Were the editors of CIL right to focus on handwritten material from the early modern period and less on the eighteenth century? Can we identify valuable handwritten copies made after CIL and IG began to be published that have gone unstudied? More generally, what pitfalls do contemporary epigraphers face when working with earlier witnesses who operated under different intellectual, aesthetic, or methodological assumptions?
We welcome proposals ranging from focused case studies of individual inscriptions, copyists, or publications to broader reflections on method and historiography. By situating epigraphy within its wider history of transmission and reception, this panel aims to build on recent work on the lifecycle of inscriptions and to highlight how the history of the discipline can continue to generate questions of approach and purpose relevant to epigraphers today.
[ .pdf 366Kb ]
Chairs: María Limón Belén, Concepción Fernández Martínez
Epigraphic poetry constitutes one of the most compelling and multifaceted expressions of ancient culture, owing to its formal and thematic diversity and to its ability to render visible social practices, linguistic usages, and poetic codes within specific contexts. In both the Latin and the Greek spheres, carmina epigraphica provide access to forms of public poetic communication that are closely connected to particular spaces, supports, and communities. For many decades, however, these compositions were regarded as a peripheral corpus, located on the margins of what was considered “canonical” literature and epigraphy.
Today, this long-standing assessment has been decisively superseded by the strong editorial, methodological, and conceptual impetus that research on epigraphic poetry has experienced in recent years. Progress in the preparation of the first fascicles of CIL XVIII, together with the publication of regional corpora, renewed editions of Carmina Epigraphica Graeca, and a growing body of specialised studies, has led to a profound reassessment of these texts as manifestations of a living, multifaceted poetic practice shared by multiple agents across the ancient Mediterranean.
This renewed interest has been accompanied by the organisation of international conferences, the development of interdisciplinary research projects with an international scope, and the consolidation of a new generation of scholars specifically trained in this field, capable of integrating philological, archaeological, historical, and digital approaches.
The present proposal for an open long panel builds on this scholarly momentum in order to foster a collective reflection on the current state of research into Latin and Greek carmina epigraphica. Its aim is to bring together contributions that address the phenomenon from different perspectives—philological, archaeological, digital, material, literary, historical, or cultural—while highlighting the diversity of methodologies and approaches available today. At the same time, the panel seeks to promote intergenerational dialogue among scholars, integrating both established research and emerging contributions.
While the panel takes the Latin tradition as a primary point of departure, it explicitly incorporates the Greek tradition of epigraphic poetry and actively promotes comparative and translinguistic approaches. In this respect, contributions are invited that explore the relationships, convergences, and divergences between Latin and Greek carmina epigraphica, in line with recent initiatives such as the joint panel at the XVI CIEGL (Bordeaux) or ongoing editorial projects like MUSA PROVINCIARUM: Carmina Epigraphica Graeca et Latina. These initiatives have clearly demonstrated the need to study these productions in dialogue.
Particular consideration will be given to papers dealing with shared motifs, common metrical formulas, cultural transfers, regional variations, processes of hybridisation, orcomparable editorial and methodological problems in both traditions, with the aim of enriching our understanding of epigraphic poetry as a form of public, situated, and performative poetry in the Roman and Hellenistic Mediterranean.
The central themes structuring the panel will include, among others:
- critical re-readings of Latin and Greek metrical inscriptions and their editorial problems (metrical criteria, critical editions, issues of attribution, variants of transmission);
- the relationships between epigraphic poetry and learned literature in both traditions (imitation, adaptation, parody, intertextuality);
- the analysis of metre, style, and rhetoric in relation to material supports and contexts of use;
- the study of archaeological contexts and their role in shaping epigraphic space;
- the social and emotional dimensions of funerary and commemorative poetry and their role in the construction of memory, identity, and affect;
- the performative, visual, and material dimensions of the carmen epigraphicum;
- the integration and development of digital tools for editing, visualisation, and metrical-stylistic analysis (databases, TEI-EpiDoc encoding, verse visualisation, etc.);
- the circulation, adaptation, and resemanticisation of poetic motifs across different areas of the orbis Romanus and the Greek world;
- parallels, contacts, and hybridisations between the Latin and Greek traditions of epigraphic poetry.
We conceive this panel as a space of convergence for research strands that have traditionally approached the phenomenon in parallel. Through the exchange of case studies, theoretical reflections, and editorial experiences, we aim to contribute to a nuanced, integrative, and comparative view of epigraphic poetry as a shared cultural practice. In line with the general objectives of the Congress, the panel seeks to highlight recent advances in the field and to open up new research questions, while fostering international dialogue among projects and scholars.
[ .pdf 470Kb ]
Chairs: Emilia Mataix Ferrándiz, Roberto D. Melfi
Commercial inscriptions — dipinti, tituli picti, stamps, graffiti, and other texts on containers and goods — offer a unique window into ancient Mediterranean trade, particularly in Greek and Roman contexts, where different legal traditions (and cultures), institutional frameworks, and epigraphic habits shaped the circulation of goods. Beyond their documentary value, they reveal the interplay between official norms and informal practices developed by merchants, professional groups (as collegia and koina), and local communities. Law becomes visible, especially in the Roman world, not only through statutes and juristic texts, but also through procedures of control, attribution of responsibility, and enforcement embedded in the daily handling and circulation of merchandise. In the Greek world, to the other side, comparable forms of normativity emerge through civic regulation, decrees, inter-polis agreements including commercial clauses in treaties – all generally categorizable as synthekai, symbola, proxeniai and syngraphai, in the broadest and most general sense of the term – that govern access to markets, ports, and trading rights.
This panel adopts a broad chronological scope to capture the range of legal and economic changes that shaped Mediterranean epigraphic cultures over time. The presence, absence, and variation of commercial inscriptions across regions point to the coexistence of multiple legal cultures. They suggest the emergence of a shared commercial language, expressed through formulas, weight marks, symbols, and other conventions that served as operational standards in which it is possible to glimpse the practical application of the legislation. These standards facilitated communication, built trust, and allowed diverse actors from different backgrounds to connect, negotiate and enforce transactions. When read alongside archaeological and iconographic evidence, such inscriptions help reconstruct the full cycle of commercial practices from departure to destination.
We welcome papers exploring how the close study of ancient sources epigraphic, documentary, and archaeological has transformed our understanding of commerce, especially in relation to legal and normative pluralism, standardization, and diversity. The panel also aims to reevaluate monumental inscriptions that have rarely been studied from the perspective of trading actors and port operations (i.e., epigraphy and law “from below”), opening new readings of texts linked to markets, agorai and fora, and professional groups, as well as port facilities, taxes and treaties which illuminate the legal and economic frameworks of the ancient trade.
In addition, we seek to reassess the historiography of commercial epigraphy, particularly the category of instrumentum domesticum, long marginalized in scholarship. Many of these texts were published in 19th-century corpora such as the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum but have not been systematically reexamined, contextualized, or relocated within their archaeological settings. Revisiting these corpora and regional studies for the Greek world (where commercial inscriptions on containers, weights, and goods are dispersed across regional corpora and thematic publications; such as the amphora stamps of Thasos) —alongside new finds—offers the opportunity to integrate commercial inscriptions into wider debates on law, economy, and society and to reassess the interaction between inter-polis normativity, imperial legal regimes and civic regulation across the ancient Mediterranean.
This panel is especially timely within the framework of the XVII CIEGL. It foregrounds the contribution of “minor” inscriptions to major historical questions; brings together epigraphists, legal historians, and archaeologists; and highlights the coexistence and interaction of multiple legal and normative traditions with civic and inter-polis regulatory practices beyond the hybridization of Roman law in the provinces, where local practices intersected with imperial norms.
Possible paper topics include, but are not limited to:
Epigraphy, mobility, and material practice:
- Epigraphy of instrumentum inscriptum and mobility of objects;
- Standardization in commercial epigraphy;
- Material agency and trade;
- New and old instrumenta inscripta;
- Production, seriality, and economic cycles (stamps, tituli picti, repeated formulas).
Law, standardization, and normativity:
- Standardization in production and commercial epigraphy as legal and procedural practice;
- Writing technologies and their impact on regulation, control, and responsibility;
- Legal pluralism and the interaction of civic, customary, and imperial norms.
Knowledge transmission and language
- Knowledge transmission across commercial networks. Multilingualism and the spread of standardized formulas
- Interactions between legal languages and local epigraphic practices
Spaces and practices:
- Port infrastructures and their links to legal-economic activity;
- Representations of commerce: inscriptions, paintings, and monuments;
- Production and seriality (stamps, tituli picti, inscriptions) as evidence for economic cycles;
- Use and reuse of inscribed objects in secondary contexts (e.g., a wine amphora reused to store honey).
Temporalities and transformations:
- Changes in epigraphic and legal practices from the Republic to Late Antiquity.
By focusing on commercial epigraphy, this panel aims to offer a fresh perspective on the relationship between inscriptions, materiality, and social practice, revealing how epigraphy functioned not merely as record-keeping but as an active instrument of communication, standardization, and regulation in the ancient Mediterranean.
[ .pdf 461Kb ]
Chairs: Silvia Tantimonaco, Roberta Marchionni
Sin dalla seconda metà del XIX secolo, le iscrizioni sono state riconosciute come fonti privilegiate per lo studio del latino in tutte le sue dimensioni. Esse consentono, infatti, di osservare la lingua sia nella sua veste normativa e letteraria, sia nelle sue manifestazioni più vive e spontanee. Offrono, inoltre, informazioni preziose sulle variazioni diacroniche e diatopiche cui il latino fu naturalmente soggetto nell’antichità e che, in ultima analisi, condussero alla nascita degli idiomi romanzi. In non pochi casi, le iscrizioni costituiscono addirittura l’unica testimonianza disponibile di fenomeni assenti nelle fonti letterarie o erudite, contribuendo in modo decisivo alla definizione del latino come lingua-corpus. Un ulteriore aspetto di rilievo risiede nella capacità della documentazione epigrafica di fornire dati fondamentali per la ricostruzione dei contatti tra lingue antiche e delle culture ad esse associate.
Da tutto ciò si deduce che una più accurata comprensione dei testi epigrafici consente di cogliere in maniera più profonda i fenomeni storici, sociali e culturali da essi espressi. La dimensione testuale delle iscrizioni le rende naturale oggetto di studio dell’indagine filologica; al tempo stesso, un approccio esclusivamente linguistico si rivela spesso insufficiente per una piena interpretazione dei dati, se non supportato da solide competenze storiche ed epigrafiche. Ne deriva l’evidente necessita di un dialogo continuo e strutturato tra filologia ed epigrafia.
Tra i diversi ambiti di indagine linguistica resi possibili dalle fonti epigrafiche, ortografia e fonetica sono senza dubbio i più evidenti; tuttavia, anche le questioni morfosintattiche, prosodiche e lessicali – spesso trascurate – meritano pari attenzione. A partire dagli inizi del XX secolo, gli studi sulla lingua epigrafica hanno privilegiato l’analisi della diversificazione territoriale del latino, adottando metodologie prevalentemente descrittive che, in molti casi, si sono rivelate limitanti. In anni più recenti, la disponibilità di database online di carattere linguistico-epigrafico e l’applicazione di modelli analitici tratti da discipline quali la statistica e la linguistica computazionale hanno prodotto risultati più solidi nello studio della variazione linguistica latina a diversi livelli. Parallelamente, studi di approfondimento si sono concentrati su fenomeni linguistici specifici – costruzioni sintattiche, espressioni ricorrenti, locuzioni, hapax, mutamenti semantici, etc. – spesso integrando la testimonianza epigrafica con altri tipi di fonti. Alla luce di queste premesse, il panel si propone di riunire contributi di natura linguistica basati su fonti epigrafiche. Saranno privilegiate in particolar modo ricerche che impieghino strumenti digitali o modelli interpretativi innovativi.
L’obiettivo e favorire il dialogo tra epigrafia e filologia, cosi come tra metodi tradizionali e approcci contemporanei, contribuendo, da un lato, al progresso dello studio della lingua latina nelle sue molteplici sfaccettature e, dall’altro, a una comprensione più articolata delle fonti epigrafiche.
[ .pdf 209Kb ]
Chairs: Sebastian Mazurek, Aleksandra Kubiak-Schneider
The Near East, a region encompassing the provinces of Syria, Judeo-Palestine, Arabia, and Mesopotamia, produced numerous epigraphic records between the 1st c. BCE and 4th c. CE. Inscriptions were written in a diversity of scripts (Aramaic, Greek, and Latin), expressing vernacular languages (different dialects of Aramaic, Hebrew, and Pahlavi), as well as Imperial (Latin and Greek) and linguae francae (Aramaic and Greek). At the same time, the various dialects and scripts of Aramaic were favoured in significant economic, political, and religious centres, such as Palmyra, Hatra, Edessa, and dynamic settlements of the Nabatean Kingdom. Aramaic inscriptions have also been found in other parts of the Empire (Britain, Dacia, Rome, Cappadocia). Such as in Egypt, the coexistence of several languages suggests that multiple distinct audiences were intended to read these inscriptions. It might also indicate that these languages performed well-defined and perceptible functions.
The epigraphic habit in the Near East differed somewhat from the neighbouring Greekspeaking regions, such as the provinces of Asia Minor and Greece. Whereas official inscriptions were common in the epigraphic landscape of the latter, they were rare in the Levant. Such an example emphasises the region's particularity. On the other hand, some categories, including funerary texts, were well represented in both areas, indicating strong similarities. By comparing the specificities of these writing cultures, one can grasp local particularities and understand how these societies expressed their political systems, religions, funerary traditions, personal identities, and concepts. Moreover, cultural and language contacts can be inferred from such a comparative approach: the frequent polyonymy among the inhabitants, the occurrence of diglossia and digraphia, their interpretatio Graeca or Romana in the religious sphere, the assimilation, adaptation or, on the contrary, the preservation of some words or concepts, represent some of the issues that can be scrutinised. While the process of provincialization, initiated with Pompey's conquest of Syria in 64 BCE, marked a new epigraphic era in the Near East, the dynamic development of Christianity in the 4th c. CE triggered a cultural, social, and political revolution, impacting the epigraphic habit and introducing new changes that reshaped the linguistic landscape.
In this workshop, we will explore the complexity of epigraphic cultures in the Near East during the Roman imperial period. Through our panel, we aim to foster discussion of the linguistic situation across the Near East in Roman times, a topic that has received less attention in scholarly debates. In addition to the themes proposed above, we invite speakers to propose new topics or unpublished inscriptions, particularly scholars who have adopted new scientific methods, such as quantitative approaches, digital humanities, or sociolinguistic concepts.
Our exploratory questions are among others:
- interaction between the cultures of writing in stone and communication in imperial languages;
- place of other languages (Aramaic, Hebrew, Ancient North Arabic) beside Greek and Latin;
- the change and continuity of epigraphic habits;
- comparison of the contents in Greek and Latin with the Aramaic texts, reevaluating the role of the latter in the Near East during the Roman imperial period;
- the role of epigraphy in expressing the identity and culture of the indigenous people;
- strategies of choice and use of epigraphic languages depending on the readership;
- case studies: for instance, Palmyra, Dura-Europos, Hatra.
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Chairs: Christoph Begass, Marco Tentori Montalto
Nach dem großen Erfolg der Sektion «Epigraphica agonistica Graeca» auf dem XVI Congressus in Bordeaux 2022, kommen wir gerne dem vielfach geäußerten Wunsch nach, in Bologna ein ähnliches Forum zu organisieren. Bekanntermaßen stammen einige der spektakulärsten epigraphischen Neufunde der letzten Jahrzehnte aus dem Bereich der Agonistik, von der Gründungsurkunde der Demostheneia aus Oinoanda und dem Gymnasiarchengesetz von Beroia bis zu den Briefen Hadrians an die dionysischen Techniten. Mit Jean-Yves Strassers Corpus der kaiserzeitlichen Siegerinschriften, Clément Sarrazanas’ Studie zu Choregie und Agonothesie in Athen und Christoph Begass’ Arbeit zur Agonothesie in Hellenismus und Kaiserzeit sind seit dem letzten Kongress Untersuchungen zur Agonistik erschienen, die maßgeblich auf inschriftlichen Quellen beruhen. Mit Hilfe dieses Materials haben Sebastian Scharff und Christian Mann zudem jüngst die Sozialgeschichte griechischer Athleten erhellt, während die große Bedeutung, die agonistische Siege für die griechischen Städte hatten, von Marco Tentori Montalto herausgearbeitet worden ist. Auf Grundlage der Inscriptiones Graecae hat Klaus Hallof gerade eine kritische Sammlung aller Olympiasieger der Antike vorgelegt, die Luigi Morettis Arbeit (1957) ersetzt. Diese Beispiele, die sich weiter vermehren lassen, zeigen eindrücklich, dass die altertumswissenschaftliche Forschung die antike Agonistik – und damit die agonistischen Inschriften als Hauptquelle – mittlerweile als zentralen Faktor der antiken Politik-, Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte erkannt hat.
Das Panel nähert sich dem Thema in möglichst breiter Perspektive. Neufunde bzw. Neulesungen und Ergänzungen bekannter Texte können in diesem Rahmen nicht nur als «Tituli novi» vorgestellt werden, sondern sogleich in ihrem inhaltlichen Kontext verortet werden. Die Vorträge sollen daher neben grundsätzlichen Fragen zur Agonistik auch deren gesellschaftliche und kulturelle Implikationen in den Blick nehmen. Neben epigraphischen Detaildiskussionen wird die Sektion damit auch ein Forum für Fragen größerer Reichweite sein, für die Inschriften nicht nur die wichtigsten, sondern oft auch die einzigen Quellen darstellen.
War die Sektion «Epigraphica agonistica Graeca» 2022 noch auf die griechische Epigraphik beschränkt, möchten wir sie dieses Mal für die gesamte griechische und römische Welt öffnen. Die Vorträge werden so ausgewählt werden, dass sie sowohl epigraphische Spezialfragen diskutieren als auch historische Analysen und methodische Reflexionen bieten. Im Idealfall eröffnen sie gemeinsam eine diachrone Perspektive, die über wichtige Einzelthemen hinaus auch Querschnitte und Verbindungen ermöglicht.
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Chairs: Margherita Facella, Charles Crowther
The rich and heterogenous cultural profile of Hellenistic and Roman Syria is characterised by borrowings, blendings, and interchanges of different traditions. Although similar processes can be observed to a degree in other areas of the Near East, the geographical location of Syria made it particularly susceptible to cultural interactions over the course of its history. Despite the constraints placed on national and international fieldwork by the events of and since 2011, epigraphic research, which has contributed so much to our knowledge of these cultural processes in Syria during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, has continued. Between 2008 and today, a dozen volumes of the indispensable Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie series (https://igls.mom.fr/corpus) have been published. Volume VI of the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names has recently been completed; separate small projects have also contributed to the advance of epigraphy in the Levant. The XVII Congressus Internationalis Epigraphiae Graecae et Latinae offers an opportunity to assess the progress of epigraphic research in these areas and to strengthen the network of scholars working in this field.
The focus of the panel will be on intercultural exchanges as reflected primarily in the Greek and Latin epigraphic evidence. The interplay of ancient and new traditions is perhaps most visible in the religious sphere. Translation and adaptation of divine entities (the so-called interpretatio graeca) was widespread in the Near East: Greek gods were not simply imposed but integrated into existing religious landscapes with naming conventions and divine roles adapted to new cultural contexts (R. Parker, Greek Gods Abroad: Names, Natures, and Transformations, California 2017). Epigraphic data also constitutes the main source for recent investigations in which the interactions between ancient religious systems is central, such as the ERC project Mapping Ancient Polytheisms directed by Corinne Bonnet (https://map-polytheisms.huma-num.fr/).
At the same time, religion represents only one of the areas that the panel seeks to explore. We welcome contributions addressing any forms of cultural interaction attested in Greek, Latin, or multilingual epigraphic sources in Syria and the Levant. Proposals will be selected with the aim of encompassing the broadest range of perspectives and methodological approaches. We anticipate that members of the IGLS team will be present to guide the discussion.
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Chairs: Livio Zerbini, Camilla Campedelli
Nel mondo romano, gli archivi erano istituzioni fondamentali per la gestione della res publica. Diffusi a Roma, nelle città e nelle province, essi conservavano gli atti prodotti dalle amministrazioni e la documentazione necessaria all’esercizio delle rispettive competenze. Le fonti epigrafiche costituiscono, per diverse ragioni, una via privilegiata per lo studio di tali archivi: la materialità e la pubblicità dei documenti innanzitutto; inoltre, le iscrizioni forniscono preziose informazioni sul personale, sulle attività degli uffci e sugli edifici destinati alla custodia. Ecco qualche esempio.
1. Materialità. Da un passo di Svetonio (Caes. 28, 2) si evince che le leggi, una volta promulgate, venivano incise sul bronzo e conservate sul Campidoglio, nell’Aerarium Saturni o nel Tabularium dove, all’epoca di Vespasiano, si contavano oltre tremila tavole aenee (SVET. Vesp. 8, 5). Così, da un luogo della cosiddetta “Tabula di Esterzili” del 69 d.C. (CIL X 7852) emerge il dato, confermato dagli agrimensori, che pure le formae agrorum, i catasti con le indicazioni dei confini, erano custoditi tanto nei tabularia provinciali quanto a Roma nel tabularium principis.
2. Pubblicità. La necessità di copiare e pubblicare (anche in più esemplari) alcune tipologie di atti amminisitrativi – alcuni per natura del provvedimento stesso, altri per autorappresentazione, altri ancora per ragioni politiche – prima della loro archiviazione, ha reso possibile il rinvenimento di tali documenti e delle copie di essi: senatus consulta, edicta, rescripta, decreta decurionum. Un esempio emblematico è il SC de Gnaeo Pisone patre che, per decisione del senato, oltre ad essere esposto a Roma e archiviato, fu pubblicato nei luoghi celeberrimi delle principali città di tutte le province. Il rinvenimento di più una copia in Baetica ha reso noto il testo del processo del senato ai danni del presunto uccisore di Germanico.
3. Personale ed edifici. Le testimonianze epigrafiche consentono di individuare il personale impiegato negli archivi (tabularii, commentarienses, γραμματεῖς, servi Caesaris o publici) e, talvolta, di ricostruirne le mansioni, come per le distribuzioni di grano a Roma (cf. S. Panciera – C. Virlouvet, “Les archives de l’administration du blé public à Rome à travers le témoignage des inscriptions”, in: C. Moatti [a c. di], La mémoire perdue. Recherches sur l’administration romaine, 1998, 247-266) o per la costruzione di monumenti sepolcrali in Asia Minore (cf. K. Harter-Uibopuu, “Epigraphische Quellen zum Archivwesen in den griechischen Poleis des ausgehenden Hellenismus und der Kaiserzeit”, in: M. Faraguna [a c. di], Archives and Archival Documents in Ancient Societies. Trieste 30 September – 1 October 2011, Trieste 2013, 273-302).
Dalle iscrizioni sappiamo anche dell’esistenza di edifici destinati all’archiviazione dei documenti in Italia e nelle province (es. CIL XI 1421. 3614. II 1964. 4248). Inoltre, secondo studi recenti, i tabularii praetorii Antiatini o villae Tiburtis attesterebbero la presenza di archivi nelle residenze imperiali extraurbane, destinati alla custodia degli atti degli imperatori presi fuori Roma.
Date queste premesse, la sessione si propone molteplici obiettivi. Attraverso contributi di inquadramento generale e analisi di casi specifici, si intende approfondire il tema della struttura e dell’organizzazione degli archivi, le modalità di produzione, conservazione, autenticazione, pubblicazione e recupero degli atti, nonché il rapporto tra il documento originale e la sua versione epigrafica esposta, con una particolare attenzione all’eventuale identificazione dell’uno con l’altra. Un’attenzione specifica sarà rivolta ai compiti dei funzionari operanti negli archivi che, permanendo a lungo nel medesimo ruolo, assicuravano concretamente la continuità dell’amministrazione, a fronte anche di cambi repentini di governo, e ai magistrati preposti alla loro supervisione (per es. a Roma i praetores aerarii e i curatores tabularum publicarum, poi prefetti), senza trascurare la varietà geografica e le interazioni tra mondo latino e greco. L’approccio sarà interdisciplinare, con un focus privilegiato sulle fonti epigrafiche anche attraverso l’impiego di strumenti informatici.
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Chairs: Carolina Cortés Bárcena, Hernán González Bordas
Definire uno spazio, separarlo, escluderlo, privatizzarlo. Lo studio delle delimitazioni fisiche è ben noto nella disciplina storica, così come in altre scienze sociali e umane, e la storiografia del mondo antico non fa eccezione. Quando si affronta l’argomento della delimitazione della terra nell’antichità, si è tradizionalmente partiti dalle fonti letterarie in generale. Successivamente, a partire dagli anni ‘70 del secolo scorso, quando si è iniziato a tradurre e studiare gli scritti del Corpus agrimensorum, la storiografia si è concentrata su questa fonte più tecnica.
Dalla fine del XX secolo e dall’inizio del XXI, gli studi sui limiti (particolarmente i confini) nel mondo antico hanno iniziato ad attribuire un ruolo centrale ai dati sul terreno e principalmente all’epigrafia. Attualmente, progetti di ricerca innovativi si occupano delle proprietà dell’imperatore (ERC Patrimonium) e delle élites (ANR ALEAM) sulla base dell’epigrafia del terreno. Basandosi su documenti come i termini o altri tipi di iscrizioni, hanno generato mappe e banche dati relative alla grande proprietà terriera. I risultati cartografici sono strumenti interattivi che offrono una sintesi dei dati scientifici e consentono di effettuare analisi spaziali e cronologiche, aprendo nuove prospettive per osservare questo fenomeno. Tuttavia, i campi possibili non sono ancora stati esauriti. Ad esempio, le iscrizioni sui confini non sono state studiate tipologicamente né in modo globale. A livello regionale, inoltre, rimangono ancora molte lacune.
Il panel che proponiamo si concentra su questa seconda prospettiva, cercando di andare oltre gli studi pubblicati, sia grazie a nuovi approcci, nuovi documenti o grazie all’uso delle tecnologie di analisi dei dati spaziali.
Nell’antichità esisteva un chiaro interesse a definire con precisione ogni tipo di confine, come testimoniano le iscrizioni epigrafiche. Nel mondo greco e romano la delimitazione degli spazi è ampiamente documentata dall’epigrafia. In Grecia si possono trovare dagli horoi che indicavano sia proprietà private, in particolare i terreni ipotecati, sia spazi pubblici all’interno della polis (agorà, fontane, ecc.), fino a stele e iscrizioni rupestri che indicavano i confini dei santuari e dei terreni sacri, passando per le epigrafi tra le poleis. A Roma i termini potevano delimitare confini provinciali, confini di territori pubblici, in particolare città, nonché quelli appartenenti a tribù, demani imperiali e privati, prata militari o loca sacra. Potevano anche indicare la separazione dei terreni all’interno delle civitates, a cui fanno spesso riferimento i praedia in Africa, ad esempio, o quelli delle centurie, o quelli che proteggevano gli spazi sacri e funerari, come i cippi con l’indicazione della pedatura. In contesto urbano possiamo parlare di limiti non solo del pomerium, ma anche di altri spazi all’interno dell’urbs, come i limiti tra vici o quelli tra vicini, riportatinelle iscrizioni su blocchi di pietra che facevano parte di un murus o paries tra due edifici. Questi atti di delimitazione erano spesso il risultato di conflitti tra i proprietari, come riportano le sentenze incise in alcune iscrizioni, che fanno anch’esse parte dell’epigrafia dei limiti. Analogamente, nel mondo greco troviamo iscrizioni destinate a risolvere controversie territoriali tra poleis nonché epigrafi che contengono arbitrati interstatali di carattere più generale, i quali includono comunque questioni territoriali.
In definitiva, l’epigrafia dei limiti, che rispondeva a diverse necessità, comprende svariate tipologie di documenti. Le differenze tra i vari tipi non sono sempre chiare, per cui risulta difficile elaborarne una classificazione. Questa categoria epigrafica è inoltre caratterizzata da una forma difficile da sistematizzare, il che rende complicata la datazione degli esemplari conservati. Per questo motivo sono fondamentali gli studi regionali che, concentrandosi sul contesto geografico e locale, consentono di determinare gli elementi propri di ciascuna zona, così come le analisi complessive che permettono di individuare le caratteristiche di ciascun periodo.
Obiettivi del panel
Il nostro panel intende quindi affrontare questo campo di ricerca con una prospettiva situata sul terreno, con l’obiettivo di sollevare e rispondere alle problematiche che emergono dalle diverse realtà regionali del mondo antico, sia greche che romane. In questo modo, intendiamo accogliere sintesi tematiche e/o regionali, nonché presentazioni di serie di documenti o di singoli documenti importanti, siano essi editiones principes o riletture.
Rientrano in questa sezione anche i lavori geografico-epigrafici e gli studi sulla materialità di queste iscrizioni: supporto, materiale, incisione, ecc., nonché sulla questione dell’esposizione: dove e come sono collocate queste iscrizioni (sia in contesti urbani che nel paesaggio agricolo)? A quale pubblico sono rivolte? In che misura si servono dei marcatori del paesaggio per raggiungere il loro obiettivo di delimitazione? Sono inoltre interessanti gli studi sul vocabolario epigrafico relativi alla questione dei limiti.
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Chairs: Jessica Lamont, Celia Sánchez Natalías
Over the last several decades, studies on ancient magic have played an increasingly important role in bettering our understanding of several aspects of Antiquity: from individuals’ level of literacy and the analysis of local linguistic variations to the study of religious beliefs and private lives. As is well known, such practices are not only documented in the literary record (e.g., magical handbooks or anecdotes preserved by classical authors) but also through the epigraphical record, namely curse tablets (defixiones or katadesmoi) and amulets (phylakteria or magical gems).
Despite their importance, these inscriptions have remained on the outskirts of conventional epigraphy for several understandable reasons. First, the material characteristics of these texts, which were often inscribed on thin sheets made of lead, gold, silver or tiny gemstones, differ considerably from other types of inscriptions; second, these texts were normally written in cursive script, either by professionals or private individuals; third, given the different linguistic and educational backgrounds of the authors of many of these texts, these documents do not always conform to the linguistic registers familiar from the literary record; fourth, these artefacts often display novel writing techniques in which the graphic arrangement of a text is treated like an image (in an interesting interplay of persuasive analogies). Furthermore, these magic inscriptions were often rolled, folded, inserted in boxes or written on mounted jewels, reflecting that their messages were originally destined for a restricted audience. These inherent difficulties, of course, point to the potential benefits of studying these texts and the ways that they can expand our understanding of religious practices, paleography and linguistics.
The decipherment and edition of such inscriptions is a notoriously complicated task that requires specific and hybrid training which falls somewhere between epigraphy and papyrology. In recent years, this scholarly undertaking has greatly benefited from the development of non-invasive imaging techniques (photogrammetry, reflectance transformation imaging [RTI], open light, x-ray tomography, etc.), allowing researchers to re-edit old texts that had been poorly understood as well as us to edit new discoveries more efficiently.
The aim of this panel is to offer a space for specialists to discuss these complicated inscriptions and evolving techniques for analyzing them. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) the following:
- re-edition of published texts;
- edition of new texts;
- the problem of dating of texts through epigraphical and papyrological comparanda;
- new technologies applied to the decipherment of magical inscriptions;
- analyzing texts written by professional practitioners versus individual practitioners;
- analyzing textual layouts (ordinationes);
- other components linked to the text: iconography, voces magicae and the interplay between these and the inscriptions themselves.
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Chair: Valentina Garulli
What is an inscription? The most trivial answer is the following: it is a text, carved or painted either on a monument or on a smaller object.
In fact, an inscription is much more than this.
On the one side, inscriptions imply multiple contexts: historical, social, geographical, sometimes literary contexts, but first they belong to a material context. As a written text often preserved together with its original medium, it must be regarded together with the monument/object on which it was written. The medium includes the shape of both the monument/object and of the text itself, which is often displayed in the inscribed area according to a well-defined and recognizable project. Letter size, letter forms, linespacing, blanks, line length, graphic devices for emphasis: all these features contribute to shape the message, as well as certain kinds of oral performance do.
On the other side, the inscribed text itself is a combination of alphabetic (thinking about Greek and Roman epigraphy) and non-alphabetic signs, all of them signifying, conveying one part of the message. These non-alphabetic signs are the most varied, especially within Greek epigraphy: some of them are attested in papyri and manuscripts too (paragraphos, diple, diple obelismene, dicolon), but sometimes with a different function. Such a variety not only makes it hard to detect the meaning of the signs used in every single inscription, but also reveals that it would be improper to assume that these signs had a specific – and not variable – meaning.
Both these aspects of ancient inscriptions – layout choices and non-alphabetic signs – deserve a special attention, since they are an integral part of the message, which cannot be fully understood without considering them. In other words, the entire monument is a unity and the text inscribed on it has to be read within the communication project it belongs to.
Within the frame of a new interest in the macro- and micro-context of inscriptions, and in particular in the monument as a whole, during the last few decades some attention has been paid also to these aspects of Greek and Latin inscriptions. Nevertheless, much still remains to be done. The next CIEGL seems to be the best occasion to share new research and to coordinate future efforts in the study of issues concerning layout and non-verbal signs in Greek and Latin inscriptions.
This proposal for an open long panel aims to stimulate a wide-ranging reflection on layout choices and non-alphabetic signs in Greek and Latin inscriptions. In particular, are welcome paper proposals trying to answer the following questions:
- What is the interaction between book writing and epigraphy? This subject has attracted a great deal of attention in the field of (Latin) verse-inscription: this sort of osmosis that may have taken place between these two channels of communication can be supposed for inscribed texts as a whole?
- Can the imitation of a handwritten model explain the usage of at least a few of nonalphabetic signs?
- What may be the influence – if any – of local usages and epigraphic traditions in some noteworthy layout choices and non-alphabetic signs? In bilingual contexts, to what extent do the graphic uses of Greek and Latin epigraphy interact and influence each other?
- What can these phenomena reveal about authors of the inscribed text, clients and readers?
- Does the use of such signs and the other visual devices reveal anything about a possible oral performance of the inscription?
- Can we figure out some kind of classification of layout models and some controlled vocabulary for the non-alphabetic signs based on their shape and function? Accordingly, in the world of digital epigraphy, and especially of digital editions using the EpiDoc language, how can we combine the need for clarity with that for consistency when encoding the non-alphabetic signs and layout features? Could we encourage the development of a standardized system of tags?
Furthermore, this open long panel proposal aims at encouraging contributions that may approach these phenomena from different methodologies and perspectives, possibly sharing the effort of comparing the evidence concerning prose and verse inscriptions on the one side, Greek and Latin inscriptions on the other side.
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Chairs: Davide Amendola, Emilio Rosamilia
To the untrained eye, ancient official inscriptions may appear as artifacts that came into being fully formed. Over the last decades, however, scholars have increasingly recognized that inscriptions are the outcome of multiple intermediate stages and processes, which can only be partially reconstructed and often with considerable effort. This shift stems both from a renewed interest in the materiality of writing in documents from the Greek and Roman past – an issue that the proposers have recently explored as co-editors of a collective volume (Text, Layout, and Medium. Documents from the Greco-Roman World Between Epigraphy and Papyrology, Florence 2024) – and a longstanding concern with ancient archives, archival practices, and documents.
Research has consistently emphasized that the materiality of inscriptions is crucial for reconstructing the sequence of processes involved in their production. The layout of each text – conceived as a combination of mise en texte and mise and page – is the outcome of multiple decisions taken by all the individuals involved. Moreover, preliminary versions of a document may leave subtle traces in the final version. For instance, signs originally intended for archival copies could be transcribed into the drafts delivered to the lettercutter, who then carved them, leaving behind index fossils of earlier stages of the same text. In addition, studies of the craftsmen engaged in the production of epigraphic documents – such as Stephen V. Tracy’s work on Athenian stone-cutters – have shed new light on these artisans and their practices, and may prove essential for understanding how they were selected.
At the same time, the text of an official inscription may occasionally shed light on the processes behind its production and even mention the individuals involved. Most Greek decrees open with the name of their proposer(s); publication clauses regularly provide details about individuals who were entrusted with overseeing the crafting and public display of the final inscription, as well as where it was to be set up; and some temple accounts even preserve the names of the humble letter-cutters who were paid to engrave them. Ancient documents also offer valuable insights into other aspects of the publication process: secretaries, copies, and archives are all explicitly mentioned.
While much recent research has examined the interplay between preliminary drafts and archival documents – now lost to us – on the one hand, and the surviving hard copies on stone or bronze on the other, this panel seeks instead to focus on the individuals that played a role in shaping inscriptions, whether issuing officials, secretaries, or craftsmen. In doing so, we aim to shed light on the people who effectively authored epigraphic documents, restoring them to their rightful place in history and providing a framework for better understanding the dynamics and agents behind the publication of official inscriptions.
Possible presentation topics include:
- The role of public slaves and other clerks in the redaction of documents;
- The design of and responsibility for the layout of inscribed documents;
- The criteria behind the selection of one cutter – or group of cutters – over another;
- The adjustments required in the transition from perishable to permanent media;
- The role of magistrates, secretaries, and cutters in determining the final appearance of an inscribed document;
- The availability and use of templates in drafting or inscribing documents;
- What ancient documents – especially publication clauses – reveal about the people involved in the process.
The wealth of evidence from Athens has given the city a prominent position in the study of the interactions between preliminary, archival, and permanent versions of the same document. Proposals focusing on Athens and its inscriptions are therefore particularly welcome. At the same time, special attention will be given to proposals involving case studies from other regions of the ancient Greek world, so as to complement and nuance the Athenian evidence. We also welcome presentations that explore comparable problems in inscriptions written in languages other than Greek, especially in the domain of Latin epigraphy.
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Chairs: James Hua, Benjamin Gray
The study of exiles and expelled peoples in the ancient world has seen much recent research, and is made ever more pertinent by current global events. Informed by refugee crises and modern studies on displacement, the recent publication of seminal volumes on forced migration in antiquity has significantly shifted our understanding of ancient societies, lived experiences, and history (e.g. Adali, Gray, Isayev, Jewell, Kacar, Mazurek and Mokrisova 2026; Fachard and Harris 2021; Isayev and Jewell 2023; Moatti and Chevreau 2021; Garland 2014 [see end for references]), and opened new questions on the ancient world. This has touched not only Greek and Roman contexts (e.g. Delp 2022, Węcowski 2022; Bräckel 2021) but also Egyptian (Langer 2021), Achaemenid Persian (Matarese 2021), and other regions and periods. The epigraphic evidence (e.g. decrees granting aid and hospitality to refugees; reconciliation and amnesty decrees; tombstones of exiles in host-cities; religious-military dedications by refugees) is key to study of this topic, and holds significant contributions and untapped resources.
This Long Open Panel aims to bring this topic into deeper conversation with the epigraphic evidence, in particular examining new evidence, approaches, interpretations of past inscriptions, and syntheses of epigraphic corpora relating to exiled and wandering individuals, groups, and populations in the ancient Greek world, from their expulsion to their return (and commemoration of their exile).
The contributions of this Panel aim to address this topic from a variety of approaches, and draw out its value to other studies in epigraphy and ancient history today. In particular, thematic approaches focusing on exiles and expulsion, such as their social, economic, and gendered aspects, are especially welcome, as are regional and chronological approaches, synoptic studies of the epigraphic output of exiles, diachronic approaches tracing developments, the different types of inscriptions produced by exiles, and new inscriptions to be adduced to this phenomenon, among other topics.
Overall, this Panel aims to offer new insights onto this topic from a variety of approaches. Throughout, questions about the spectrum of ‘forced’ movement will be addressed, in particular on the frequency and degree to which the expelled people were relocated to a fixed new place or were left wandering. The relationship of the many forms of exile (captives, exiles of different social classes, economic migrants, refugees), both voluntary and more forcible, will be contextualized in the contributions, as well as the links between the epigraphy of exiles and their parallel representations in the archaeological, literary, and oratorical sources. Finally, discussions on the nature of the epigraphic evidence of exiles and its limitations (cf. Tacoma and Tybout 2018) will also be critically considered, alongside drawing out future paths forward in this urgent and under-explored field.
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Chairs: Gabriel Bodard, Irene Polinskaya
The last 20 years have witnessed a steady increase in the number of regional and thematic collections of ancient inscriptions published in digital format (from half a dozen in 2005 to hundreds in 2025, many but by no means all based on EpiDoc XML). This growth testifies to the appreciation of digital format as an effective mode for structuring and publication of large epigraphic data and as a versatile tool for research. We trace three stages in the development of this practice:
1. Pioneering work in this area exemplified by projects including Inscriptions of Aphrodisias, US Epigraphy and Vindolanda Tablets Online
2. Formative period where the experience and example of the first projects and tools were applied to new bodies of inscriptions from different geographic regions and in several languages, such as the Northern Black Sea, Greek Cyrenaica, Roman Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, iSicily, and non-Mediterranean corpora including Og(h)am and DHARMA.
3. Mature phase, where the epigraphic discipline (and the digital humanities community, more widely) is now reflecting on big questions around digital methods including open data and standards; findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability (FAIR); collective benefit, authority, responsibility and ethics (CARE); sustainability of digital resources and tools; affordability of labour and hosting.
The digital epigraphic community today is also concerned with the relationship between individual digital epigraphic publications and the large, discipline-wide corpora (EDCS, PHI), with work led by EAGLE, IDEA, Epigraphy.info, etc. Discussions of intersections between digital and print cultures are ongoing, sometimes fed by scepticism about digital philology and epigraphy, as well as by concerns about the impact of machine learning. Recent cybersecurity issues have exacerbated stability of online provision, at the same time as some of the older corpora suffer from aging infrastructure or expiring institutional support contracts. At the same time, moves toward standardisation of metadata, vocabularies and references form a lively tension with a diversifying field of publication tools and formats.
Now is an apposite moment to take stock of developments in this area of digital epigraphy and consider future opportunities and challenges. We would like to invite creators and curators of digital epigraphic corpora of Greek and Latin (and related) inscriptions to share their experiences, insights, and advice to others currently working on or planning digital epigraphic corpora. Reflections are invited on the OPPORTUNITIES and CHALLENGES of digital presentation for epigraphic corpora, including but not limited to:
Findability and accessibility
▪ Freedom of access, open standards, formats and licenses.
▪ Multiple tables of contents, indexes, search options and views of the content.
▪ Multiple images and other media (e.g. RTI, 3D models, geo-visualisation), and other novel technologies for capturing and analysing material and textual facets of inscriptions.
▪ Explicit recording of context, transmission, issues with provenance and the antiquities market.
▪ Costs, both financial and labour, of development, hosting and other stages of digital publication.
▪ Sustainability of publication: while fragile, preservation of online publication is ensured by multiple copies, use of repositories, open licensed and reused content, treating underlying data and code as publication, as much as specific rendered content.
Interoperability and reusability
▪ via adoption of EpiDoc Guidelines, Schema and code (Stylesheets, EFES).
▪ Consistency of format between publications (with wide customisation).
▪ Simple implementation with supported tools and widely available expertise.
▪ Integration with Linked Open Data – ontologies, multilingual vocabularies (EAGLE, EpiVoc, FAIR Epigraphy) or Wikidata properties.
▪ Issues with citation and versioning of subsequent editions, republications of lemmata or collections, or archiving.
▪ Impact of machine learning and other advanced computational methods.
We welcome presentations from both veterans and beginners and encourage discussions equally of difficulties and of promising innovations in the field of digital epigraphy.
[ .pdf 232Kb ]
Chairs: Jonathan Prag, Anna Gutiérrez Garcia-Moreno
In recent years, attention has increasingly focused upon the monumentality and display of epigraphy. The theme was central to the Berlin epigraphic congress in 2012 and other recent collective works (Eck and Funke 2014; Sears et al. 2013). More generally, the so-called ‘material turn’ (and also the ‘spatial turn’) in historical and archaeological research has intensified the focus upon the importance of material objects in historical interpretation (Riello 2022, Pitts and Versluys 2021), and epigraphic materiality is now a subject in its own right (Petrovic et al. 2019). However, this increased emphasis on texts as objects has yet to see a systematic focus on the underlying materials themselves, as opposed to their broader materiality.
In this panel, we wish to direct attention more specifically on the actual material qualities of inscriptions, as an aspect which has been very largely overlooked to date (e.g. absent from all three publications cited above). The exploitation and significance, both economic and cultural, of stone, particularly in the Roman world is increasingly well understood (e.g. Russell 2013, Taelman 2022). The essential, if complex, application of archaeometric methods of analysis has brought the necessary rigour and precision to such study, which is fundamentally interdisciplinary and collaborative. However, such work has overwhelmingly focused upon the choice of stone in architectural and sculptural contexts: epigraphic studies are extremely rare (1.6% of the data collected in the review by Taelman 2022), and in most cases are incidental to a broader study of stone-use in a particular context. In much epigraphic study, stone identification is vague, imprecise, and frequently misleading or simply incorrect.
The choice of stone matters from multiple perspectives: aesthetics, availability, and suitability (Russell 2013: 8-36; Rockwell 1993: 15-30). Such choices are freighted with economic and social consequence (cost, social pressures, craft traditions, etc.). The rise in use of coloured ‘marbles’ in the Roman period more generally is well documented, but the extent to which this plays out in epigraphic display has only been explored to a very limited extent, above all in the Iberian peninsula (e.g. Mayer 2012, Gorostidi 2020, Rodà et al. 2023, Gorostidi et al. 2025). The wider picture, whether regional variation in the Roman world, or the potentially completely different pratices of different periods, regions, and epigraphic cultures of the ancient world remain very largely unexplored (Prag et al. 2026, for a preliminary study in Sicilian epigraphy).
This ‘hard’ materiality is not, however, limited to choices of stone: the selection and use of pigments in the decorating of epigraphic texts (‘rubrication’) is a no less fundamental aspect of both their physical form and their economic and social significance. Moreover, the choice of pigments used must be considered in association with the stone itself: both must be understood as parts of a single, coherent epigraphic project. Despite the increasing emphasis upon the importance of colour in the ancient world (Østergaard 2017), study of the use of colour in inscriptions specifically is also still in its infancy (Rebuffat 1995, Campbell 2020, Coccato et al. 2024). Yet here too, choices of pigments have very clear social, economic, and aesthetic consequences.
In this panel we invite contributions on all aspects of materials use in lapidary epigraphy, in the hope of initiating a new field of discussion, for which truly collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches are essential. Potential contributions may address any aspect of this ‘hard’ materiality with reference to any period or language of the epigraphic cultures of the ancient Greco-Roman world, broadly conceived, but all contributions must address the contribution which the close study of materials can make to our understanding of epigraphic culture.
[ .pdf 393Kb ]
Chairs: Polly Low, Anna M. Sitz
Ancient city-states and individuals often intended the inscriptions they put up to remain untouched and in place for the distant future, but in reality many inscribed texts were reused – and also modified – already in antiquity. The proposed session explores inscriptions that were recycled, not merely as spoliated building blocks, but for later epigraphic uses: e.g., inscribed bases with secondary honorific texts for new honorees (Moser 2017, 2023), dedications erased due to damnatio memoriae (Lefebvre 2004), civic decrees partially removed in line with political changes (Low 2020), dedications to pagan gods creatively modified during the period of Christianization (Sitz 2023), etc. Rather than being simply a ‘cheap’ way to produce new inscriptions (urban prefects in late antique Rome were more likely to reuse statue bases than lesser officials: Machado 2017), the decision to reuse, reinscribe, or selectively erase a pre-existing inscription was bound up with issues of memory, appropriation, and engagement with the past.
This session brings together papers on epigraphic reuse in different time periods, potentially dealing with material from the Archaic period through Late Antiquity, in Latin, Greek, or other ancient languages. Although the phenomenon of reusing and modifying inscriptions was well known to ancient viewers (cf. Dio Chrysostom’s complaints about metagraphe, the reinscribing of statue bases), the study of reuse continues to provide fresh insights on the following larger topics:
- The epigraphic habit: not only the production of new inscriptions, but also reuse, modification, and erasure were a part of the epigraphic habit and contributed to epigraphic landscapes in cities, sanctuaries, and necropoleis. Rather than being of secondary importance in comparison with studying the original text on the stone, such later erasures and modifications are critical evidence for the roles that inscriptions played in ancient communities.
- The mnemotic role of inscriptions: the addition of a new text to an older inscribed stone was not a neutral decision but made certain claims about the past (and the present). Likewise, rasurae did much more than simply remove information or ‘erase’ memory. Instead, they invite the viewer to reflect on the purpose and process of erasure. We may even speak of creatio memoriae instead of damnatio memoriae (Omissi 2016).
- The makers and viewers of inscriptions: who was able to appropriate inscriptions for their own later use? How sophisticated was their engagement with the original text? Who were the intended viewers? And what does this tell us about epigraphic literacy in various periods?
- The making of scholarly editions: the modification of an inscribed stone sometimes centuries after its original carving can challenge some of our habits of publishing inscriptions, such as the dividing up of texts by time period (Sitz Forthcoming); for example, the visual and verbal echoing of an earlier inscription in a text from centuries later is difficult to capture in a corpus (cf. Moser 2023, 2026). The application of interdisciplinary approaches, particularly from archaeology, can aid in considering inscribed monuments more holistically across their full ‘life spans’.
As a whole, then, the papers in this session challenge us to think about inscribed texts in new ways, as dynamic and evolving rather than static. We envision the publication of select papers from the session in a volume to be co-edited with Prof. Muriel Moser-Gerber.
[ .pdf 465Kb ]
Chairs: John Bodel, Silvia Orlandi
During the thirty years between 1885 and the outbreak of World War II, building operations conducted in the northern part of Rome in order to lay out a new residential district on the Pincian hill uncovered a large early imperial necropolis north of the Aurelian Wall between the Piazza Fiume and the modern Via Pinciana that contained more than 1,000 tombs and nearly 2,500 funerary inscriptions. Many of the artifacts recovered during these operations found their way onto the antiquities market and, through the hands of various dealers in Rome, into the collections of universities and museums in the USA and Europe. The origins of many of these objects are known to us only through archival documents and unpublished manuscripts that can now be consulted through the digital version of the giornali di scavo at the website of the Archivio di Documentazione Archeologica curated by Antonella erraro. This resource is fundamental for reconstructing the topographical contexts from which more than 1,000 of the 1,600 Roman stone inscriptions acquired by American collectors during this period derived. At the same time, understanding the diaspora of inscriptions from the Via Salaria burial ground requires tracing their histories back from their current locations through museum and university records often available only in the USA or elsewhere.
The goal of the Via Salaria Necropolis Project, co-directed by the panel organizers, is to unify and synthesize the disparate information aggregated in recent years by researchers preparing xml EpiDoc editions of these inscriptions for publication at the Epigraphic Database Roma (Orlandi) and the U.S. Epigraphy Project (Bodel). In many cases it has been possible to trace individual object histories of inscriptions from the Via Salaria necropolis now in American collections, and to contextualize their origins and transatlantic journeys more fully, but these stories have thus far remained isolated and independent, existing only in the form of individual linked entries in the two databases.
The aim of the present panel is to move beyond these isolated micro-histories by illustrating the types of research questions that can be investigated through consideration of the Via Salaria inscriptions more broadly. Possible topics might include: the historical character of the Via Salaria cemetery; the topography and archaeological history of the zone; American collecting practices; the epigraphic antiquities market in Rome at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries; inscriptions as cultural patrimony; and the roles of key individuals (archaeologists, dealers, collectors).
[ .pdf 368Kb ]
Chairs: Francisco Beltrán Lloris, María José Estarán Tolosa
The introductory paper of this panel will outline the main features of the transformation undergone by the use of epigraphic writing in Latin language in the Mediterranean between the late 3rd and 1st centuries BCE, focusing on the interrelations between Roman epigraphic culture and local cultures (including Greek speaking communities), and, in particular, on the new role played by monumental writing, publicly displayed, as an instrument of power assertion and social self-representation, which emerged in the context of the monumentalization of urban centers and cult places or was integrated into already monumentalized spaces, especially in the eastern Mediterranean. The application of a comparative perspective will reveal that public writing was not a mere corollary of architectural monumentalization, but rather a medium of political and social communication, strategically appropriated by communities and local elites in profoundly diverse ways.
To this end, the analysis will deal, among other topics, with the innovations experienced by epigraphic culture in Rome and the interventions of Roman elites who disseminated them throughout Italy and the provinces—developments well illustrated by the proliferation of honorific pedestals, building inscriptions (e.g. epigraphs commemorating the construction of fortifications), or examples such as the tituli Mummiani or milestones, among many others. Particular attention should be paid to eastern inscriptions that are integrated into spaces with long-standing traditions of monumental epigraphy in the Greek language and that are subsequently composed in Latin or in both languages.
[ .pdf 302Kb ]
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