Inscriptions and Their Uses in Greek and Latin Literature

About this book

Provides a fuller picture of the interaction between epigraphic and literary culture in the ancient world. Covers Greek and Latin texts, both prose and verse. Offers a broad range of modern perspectives on the ancient uses of inscriptions, with connotations for our understanding of literacy and reading. Explores a new set of perspectives on the ancient reception of inscriptions. Inscriptions and their Uses in Greek and Latin Literature offers a broad set of perspectives on the diverse forms of epigraphic material present in ancient literary texts, and the variety of responses, both ancient and modern, which they can provoke.This collection of essays explores the various ways in which ancient authors used inscribed texts and documents. From the archaic period onwards, ancient literary authors working within a range of genres, such as oratory, philosophy, poetry, and historiography, discussed and quoted a variety of inscriptions. They deployed them as ornamental devices, as alternative voices to that of the narrator, to display scholarship, to make points about history, politics, individual morality, and piety, and even to express moral views about the nature of epigraphy.