A Companion to Late Antique Literature
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Figure 31.1 shows a typical edition of a short, but important, inscription about L. Aradius Valerius Proculus, prefect of Rome from March 337 to January 338, engraved on a marble block found in the Forum of Trajan at Rome, slightly modified from the edition by Geza Alföldy and Andrea Scheithauer in CIL 6.8.2 (1996) 4555, no. 40776.
Figure 31.1 Edition of inscription in the Forum of Trajan, Rome.
(modified from CIL 6.40776)
Editions of inscriptions include all sorts of metatextual information, and understanding this inscription requires familiarity with the conventions of epigraphical markup. In particular, this edited version reveals the deployment of different types of brackets: (letters added by the editors to resolve abbreviations used in the inscription), [letters and words once inscribed but lost through damage and now restored by the editors], {letters added in error by the engraver and excised by the editors},
In this letter Constantine was either announcing the appointment of Proculus as prefect or responding to a request from the senate to erect a statue of Proculus. The confluence of imperial titles suggest that Constantine sent the letter within a few months of his death in May 337. The protocol in the preamble included the names of his three sons and his nephew Dalmatius, whom he had promoted as his successors. After Constantine’s death, however, the army murdered several peripheral relatives, including Dalmatius, to ensure the succession of only his sons. Dalmatius’s name was hence chiseled off the inscription.
31.3 Sources
The historical information derived from inscriptions has contributed significantly to standard narratives of late antiquity. One field that has clearly benefited is prosopography, the study of the careers of aristocrats and noted intellectuals. Dedications to and epitaphs about senators at Rome typically listed their offices, other honors, and perhaps some comments about their families and personalities. The inscription with Constantine’s letter about Proculus was engraved probably on the side of the block so that a traditional career inscription could be engraved on the front (Weisweiler 2012, pp. 310–313). In provincial cities dedications to imperial magistrates and other notables likewise typically noted their accomplishments. These offices and achievements have been collected into a vast panorama of the activities of imperial magistrates and urban elites throughout the empire. The catalogs of their careers in The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire rely heavily on data from inscribed dedications and funerary monuments.
The field of late Roman law is another beneficiary. Inscribed laws are valuable for understanding aspects of the process of formulating and broadcasting laws, such as the transmission of imperial decisions from the courts to the imperial magistrates in the provinces, their reception among provincials, and the procedures for collecting and editing the constitutions in later centuries. Especially precious are inscribed versions of laws also included in the large Codes. In 362 the emperor Julian sent a rescript to the prefect of the East about the appointment of minor judges by provincial governors. An inscribed copy of the rescript erected at Minoa on the island of Amorgos cited the entire law but omitted the emperor’s saluation to the prefect and the concluding indication of the date and place of publication. In contrast, the versions in the Theodosian Code and the Code of Justinian included the opening and closing protocols but deleted two‐thirds of the actual law (CTh 1.16.8; CJ 3.3.5; Feissel 2010, pp. 205–222). In 435 the emperor Theodosius II authorized the compilers of the Theodosian Code to “excise superfluous words, add necessary words, change ambiguous words, and emend incorrect words” (CTh 1.1.6). But as is already apparent in the inscribed version of Julian’s law, the process of revision and modification had started immediately after imperial courts issued rescripts and edicts. By deciding how much of a law to display, imperial magistrates and municipal officials became “lawmakers” themselves. Publicizing a law or an imperial letter by deciding what to have engraved in a public inscription was as much of a process of “editing” as our deciphering and correcting that inscription in a modern edition.
Even though modern historians tend to be most attracted to inscriptions about imperial laws and aristocratic careers, the survival of such elite inscriptions was quite haphazard. The two most ubiquitous categories of inscriptions were instead more humble. One was tombstones, with their epitaphs often noting the age of the deceased and the grief of their relatives. The other was milestones, which advertised the names of emperors throughout the provinces. In total, graveyards in the suburbs and roads in the countryside were tattooed with millions of inscriptions.
Tombstones and milestones seem unpromising as both historical sources and literary texts: Not only are they usually very short; they are also formulaic. In fact, though, they can become valuable for insights into Roman society. Milestones were an important technique for projecting the authority of emperors. In a society with delays in communication and slow travel, milestones allowed emperors to be everywhere at once. The names of emperors on milestones were even more pervasive than their images on coins. Milestones were how emperors “marked” their territory. As a Gallic aristocrat noted in the mid‐fifth century, “The name of Caesar blossoms on very old milestones” (Sidonius, Carm. 24.6–7). New milestones were being erected until at least the early fifth century in the West and at least the early sixth century in the East.
Tombstones provide important information about the demographic profile of Roman society. Many tombstones, for instance, mention the age of the deceased and the commemorators. An analysis of thousands of tombstones has concluded that spouses replaced parents as commemorators for men who died at around age 30 and women who died at around age 20. These results seem to imply that men typically married in their late twenties and women in their late teens. This conclusion about marriage customs involves the use of sampling from huge collections of epitaphs and the assumption that a shift in the commemorators can be used as proxy evidence for a change in marital status (Saller and Shaw 1984). As a result, tombstones, like milestones, can be aggregated to become a composite literary text.
Inscriptions had stories to tell: sometimes literally so. Some inscriptions addressed their readers and viewers and engaged in a virtual dialogue; sometimes the honorands on dedicatory inscriptions and the commemorated on tombstones spoke in the first person, talking from their stones. Over the centuries so many inscriptions have been lost that we cannot assume any reliable and even distribution among the surviving inscriptions. In order to overcome this “editing” through the passage of time, modern historians can resort to aggregation and sampling. Both individually and in compilations, inscriptions provide narratives, plots, characters, and motives. Inscriptions were hence literary texts twice over, both as discrete miniaturized novellas and as entries in aggregated databases.
31.4 Texts
Inscriptions preserve many texts that would be otherwise lost. In fact, inscriptions can provide many examples for most of the literary forms discussed in this Companion, including poetry, epistolography (such as Constantine’s letter), biography and autobiography, legal texts, travel and pilgrimage literature, and translation (Trout 2009). In addition, some of the literary forms that might seem to consist of only writings in manuscripts could also incorporate texts that survive in inscriptions.
One example is panegyrics. On formal occasions panegyrists would deliver extensive orations celebrating emperors or imperial magistrates for their pedigrees and accomplishments. Inscribed dedications were likewise miniature panegyrics. At Rome the emperor was not the only source of honors for Proculus. The guild of pig dealers and butchers, the guild of bakers, and the people of the city of Puteoli all sponsored dedications and statues in honor of their “most worthy patron.” These dedications were displayed in a recep
tion room of the family’s house on the Caelian Hill (Gehn 2012, pp. 16–20), and listed Proculus’s many offices, including his priesthoods; his governorships and other magistracies in North Africa, Spain, and Sicily; his consulship; and his two tenures as prefect of Rome (CIL 6.1690 (= ILS 1240), 1691, 1692 (= ILS 1242), 1693 (= ILS 1241), 1694). For these dedications the marble blocks were the equivalent of an orator, broadcasting Proculus’s distinctions. But in contrast to the evanescence of panegyrics, the inscribed stones kept on speaking for centuries.
Scholars of classical and theological literature have increasingly adopted interpretive approaches pioneered by literary critics. Narratology, intertextuality, speech‐act theory, communication theory, memory studies, oral traditions, postcolonial theory, new historicism: Every interpretive approach applied to literary writings can also be applied to inscriptions. Proculus’s dedications, for instance, were more than lists of his offices. In one dedication the inscription tried to establish a dialogue by puncturing the conventional wall between texts and readers. The “speaker” of this dedication addressed spectators directly: “Why should I remember his other accomplishments, when you are looking at Proculus [i.e. a statue], who was born for every honor?” In another dedication the honoree spoke for himself: “I am that Proculus who was born for every honor. Mention the honor that you say I do not possess.” These are remarkably stylish rhetorical techniques that now require equally sophisticated literary interpretations.
One outcome of modern interpretive perspectives is to emphasize the role of authors in constructing their writings and advancing their own agendas. Even writings about past events, such as historical narratives, were dominated by present concerns. Inscriptions may seem to avoid this restriction. Not only were many anonymous, but they were also produced at the moment. Inscriptions seem to provide objective, immediate, and firsthand data uncontaminated by authorial bias or subsequent scribal adulteration. They seem to have an aura of historical authenticity, unmediated through layers of manuscript transcriptions.
In fact, no matter how close their inscribing was to the moment of the events or people they mention, inscriptions too reflected personal and social concerns. Every inscribed text was stylized and constructed, a representation of self‐identity, a contribution to community solidarity, or an attempt to find solace in times of grieving.
Inscriptions were not original texts. They were not autograph documents like many papyri but rather copies like medieval manuscripts. Most inscriptions were derived from original texts that had been written on a perishable medium. The initial public display of official edicts and rescripts was often as announcements painted on whitewashed boards. Then imperial magistrates, municipal officials, patrons, or family might initiate their engraving in a permanent form on stones. In the process of transferring the words from one medium to another, the engravers, just like medieval scribes, made mistakes. Modern epigraphers are hence similar to modern palaeographers. In editing an inscription such as Constantine’s letter about Proculus, scholars are trying to conjure up the original version, while restoring the derivative copy engraved on the stone and while acknowledging that a few words in that engraved copy were subsequently erased. A modern edition of an inscription is hence a palimpsest, with several layers of text hidden within the top layer that appears on the page.
Upon seeing either actual engraved inscriptions or modern edited texts, scholars read and decode them. For most people in antiquity, however, the first response was only to look at the inscriptions. Most simply could not read at all. The level of literacy was very low, perhaps as low as 10% of the population (Harris 1989, p. 22). Another handicap was the display of inscriptions in foreign languages. During the fourth century the language of imperial administration was still Latin, which could be problematic in the eastern Greek provinces (Van Dam 2007, pp. 184–216; Isaac 2009). At Aphrodisias in western Asia Minor, for instance, Diocletian’s Edict on Maximum Prices was engraved in Latin on a large wall made of marble panels. The stonecutters were apparently so uneasy with both the language and the alphabet that they simply imitated the letter forms in the written copy (Reynolds 1989). From the intimidating length of the inscription viewers could perhaps deduce the authority of the emperors, but as Greek speakers, they could not read about it.
Rome too was not immune to this problem of exotic languages. In the unsanitary conditions of a big city, mortality rates were high, and only a constant inflow of migrants could sustain its enormous population. Some came willingly for the benefits given to residents of the capital, but many came unwillingly as slaves. Most of those immigrants were from the outlying provinces and frontier regions, and many were not native Latin speakers. Languages and migrations intersected without coinciding. The emperors and their magistrates exported Latin directives to the Greek provinces, while their policies encouraged the importation of non‐Latin speakers to Rome. In both cases the result was the same: Most people could not read inscriptions in Latin.
31.5 Images
In late antiquity inscriptions were images first. Interpreting inscriptions hence requires an appreciation of several aspects of their visual poetics.
One aspect would highlight the appearance of inscriptions. In the inscription recording Constantine’s letter to the magistrates, senate, and people of Rome, for instance, the text was engraved in majuscules. Capital letters were in fact used in most inscriptions, although in our modern context of email and texting they seem a bit strident. Font size could also denote relative ranks. In the preamble the names of the emperors and their victory titles were engraved in letters that were almost twice the height of the letters used for the content of the dispatch, and Constantine’s names in the first line were slightly taller than those of his sons and nephew. The engraver further emphasized the importance of the emperors by framing their formal salutation with empty spaces before and after. This highlighting was perhaps an attempt to imitate the appearance of Constantine’s actual letter, in which his secretaries had left a blank space so that he could insert the salutation in his own hand. But the outcome of this use of different font sizes and blank spaces is quite startling, because it effectively reversed the intent of the letter. Although the original letter had celebrated the honor for Proculus and the consensus between emperors and senate, the inscribed version emphasized the majesty of the emperors. Proculus seems to have been an afterthought. The appearance of the inscription trumped the words of the letter.
It is difficult to convey all of these implications in a translation into a modern language. Most translations of inscriptions render the words in lower‐case letters, so that the translations look like a paragraph in a modern book. In the case of Constantine’s letter, a translation could instead imitate the engraved inscription by printing upper‐case letters in different sizes and by deploying the same number of lines, including empty spaces. But note too that even as a translation tries to mimic the appearance of the letters, it becomes only an evocation of the appearance of the entire inscription, resembling neither the broken stone nor the modern annotated edition. Translations tend to ignore most of the editorial brackets, excepting the double square brackets indicating erasure; and in the translation shown in Figure 31.2 parentheses enclose words added for clarification in English.
Figure 31.2 Translation of inscription in the Forum of Trajan, Rome.
A second aspect of the visuality of inscriptions would emphasize the accompanying monuments. The surviving piece of the marble block on which Constantine’s letter about Proculus had been engraved is about three feet high, and the original was taller. This block served as the base for a statue, which was probably near life‐size. While the top of the inscription was set at about eye height, the statue loomed over the viewers. We prioritize the inscription, because the statue is now lost; but in antiquity the statue was the more prominent feature of the monument and overshadowed the engraved words (Smith and Ward‐Perkins 2016).
A final aspect would emphasize the locations and topographic
al contexts of inscriptions. The statue of Proculus and its inscribed base was erected in the Forum of Trajan, which had been constructed over two centuries earlier to commemorate the conquest of Dacia. In the center of the enormous forecourt was a large bronze statue of Trajan mounted on a horse. Over the centuries more statues had been added, both statues of other emperors and statues of prominent senators (Chenault 2012). The statue of Proculus hence stood in good company.
Modern scholars often investigate allusions in literary writings. Not only do intertextual borrowings bring literary works into dialogue, even writings that are separated by centuries; in addition, in the process of interacting each text modifies the meaning of the other by conjuring an alternative conceptual frame. The same interpretive technique should be applied to inscriptions. In the Forum of Trajan Constantine’s letter about Proculus could not be read in isolation from all the other dedications on display, and Proculus’s statue could not be viewed without also looking at all the other statues. Just as the use of intertexts widened the scope and significance of literary texts, so for inscriptions (and statues), modern scholars need to evaluate the impact of inter‐inscriptions.
This awareness of what we might call inter‐monumentality suggests an additional implication about what should be classified as late antique inscriptions. The great modern collections contain hundreds of thousands of inscriptions from the entire period of Greek and Roman antiquity, and thousands more are being added every year. Even though only a smallish percentage of these inscriptions was actually engraved during the late antique period, many of the old inscriptions were still on display. Rome was, of course, the largest epigraphical museum in the empire, but throughout the empire cities were crowded with inscriptions, along with their accompanying statues and monuments. Through allusions and quotations, sometimes just through proximity, these old inscriptions interacted with new inscriptions. As a result, the old inscriptions from early antiquity that were still on display should also be counted among the inscriptions of late antiquity.