Inscriptions

[gilius]

It's extremely frustrating not knowing which Roman towns held the elevated status of Municipium/Coloniae within provinces of the Roman Empire, such as Gaul, which are hinted at in certain publications without ever presenting a full set of data.

 

Considering Britannia is most familiar to me out of all the provinces and the most researched, I was reading up on how scholars have constructed their town maps of Roman Britain, which seems to be based on painful research into the Iron Age tribes, for the Romans founded a civitas capital in the heart of former tribal areas, and these were sometimes promoted to Municipia/Colonia (or some Colonia were newly founded in areas encroaching on civitates).

 

Using Britannia as an example, the single best source for identifying the Municipia/Colonia is from epigraphic evidence; inscriptions identifying important towns in Britain were found in places other than Britain: Rome (x 2), Mainz, and south of France.

http://www.romanbritain.freeserve.co.uk/townsevidence.htm

 

Is there any good publications for important Roman inscriptions found throughout the world? Obviously, books like the Roman Insciptions of Britain or Roman Britain: A Sourcebook only feature inscriptions that were found locally and not necessarily ones that were important to Britannia, i.e. none of the 4 inscriptions above are featured in those publications as they were found overseas. Therefore, what would be nice would be a general database with inscriptions from all over.

[Melvadius]

 

Is there any good publications for important Roman inscriptions found throughout the world? Obviously, books like the Roman Insciptions of Britain or Roman Britain: A Sourcebook only feature inscriptions that were found locally and not necessarily ones that were important to Britannia, i.e. none of the 4 inscriptions above are featured in those publications as they were found overseas. Therefore, what would be nice would be a general database with inscriptions from all over.

 

You need to look up Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) which is the most comprehensive listing and now online. It supplements and effectively rerplaces the Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae (ILS) while in some instances Inscriptiones Graecae may also provide information. Along with the Roman Inscriptions of Britain (RIB), these are the standard reference points for any inscription although IIRC in some instances you may not necessarily get translations of the text in some sources just the surviving inscriptions and there is some overlap between the different listings.

[Ingsoc]

The Epigraphik-Datenbank also include non CIL inscriptions, it's also has a good search engine that allow you to search specific words and locations.

[Klingan]

Here's a guide on how to use CIL and ILS efficiently.

[gilius]

Here's a guide on how to use CIL and ILS efficiently.

Many thanks for everyone's informative responses! I guess most of the important inscriptions must be translated, so I guess I would like to know if there are translated volumes available anywhere online or in book form?

[Melvadius]

Gilius,

 

Given that in total we are dealing with someting in the order of a million inscriptions across the Roamn Empire then yes of course 'important' inscriptions have been translated and are available in numerous books and online. The point you need to bear in mind is that authors in any media will pick and choose which inscriptions they use for their own purposes, some will be used extensively while others only appearing in a relatively small number of locations. This obviously means that a definition of 'important' can be a very relative term, I have attended several lectures where the speakers have had to make referrence to their own translations.

 

On this basis I doubt if anyone can give you a definitive list of where to find every 'important text' in translated format or even how accurately they may have been translated/ interpolated. This is particularly so for those inscriptions which although 'obviously' important have only been found in very fragmentary formats as collation of all the parts may take years and/or never be completed.

[gilius]

That example inscription is very moving, and I am touched by it, but to me (and probably most scholars) the most important ones are those that identify the status of towns within various provinces of the Roman Empire, i.e. vici, civitates, municipia and colonia; translations of those is what I'm mainly seeking, but of course, anything translated that makes sense and is informative is worth me reading. Thanks.

[Bryaxis Hecatee]

well it might surprise you but many of those inscriptions giving the status of town or other administrative units might not have been considered usefull to translate because they migth use some kind of standardized text (and eventually abreviation) that, to anyone trained in epigraphy, is quite straightforward and thus does not require a translation to be provided. Let's imagine a text from Paris, France, about someone who would have been a duumvir in Lutece and whose tombstone is being read by you. The fact he's a duumvir gives us the status of the city but the inscription might simply say "D.M. Q. Julius Q. f. Fab IIvir Lutecia LDD SPVF" and this is all the trained epigraphist would need. For an untrained man of course it has to be expanded and explained as : "Dis Manibus Quintus Julius Quintus Filius Fabia Tribus Duumvir of Lutecia In Loco Decurionem Dedit De Suo Pecunia Et Vivit Fecit" (i know my latin is very bad, too late to check on the exact abreviations and correct latin spelling, sorry) which you'd then have to translate as : "To the Gods of the Ancesters Quintus Julius son of Quintus, from the voting tribe Fabia, Duumvir of the colonia of Lutecia, in a place given by the decuriones, had this erected while living with his own money"

His name and the fact he's member of a voting tribu would tell us he's got roman citizenship, the rank he held in life give us the fact he was rich and that the city had the statut of a colony because only them had duumvir at their head. The fact the D.M. abreviation is used tells us it's a first century AD tomb because before that D.M. is not used and the formula changes in the 2nd century (but in northern Italy D.M. is more 1st century BC) But in scientific article you'll only find "Lutece, a colony since sometime in the 1st century AD and certainly no later than the 2nd century AD (see CIL xxxx) ..." : no one translate the inscription in the publication, for everyone can go and check it since it's part of basic training...