Inscriptions and their Uses in Greek and Latin Literature

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.

Peter Liddel is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Manchester.

Polly Low is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Manchester.

Preface
List of Contributors
List of Illustrations
1. Introduction: The Reception of Ancient Inscriptions, Peter Liddel and Polly Low
Part I: Literary Epigraphy and the Ancient Past
2. Cui vetustas fidem faciat: Inscriptions and Other Material Relics of the Past in Greco-Roman Antiquity, Andreas Hartmann
3. Herodotus and Temple Inventories, Elizabeth Kosmetatou
4. Illustrating, Documenting, Making-Believe: The Use of Psephismata in Hellenistic Biographies of Philosophers, Matthias Haake
5. From Inscriptions to Literature (and Sometimes Back Again): Some uses of the epigraphic sources in the ancient literary traditions on Delphi, Manuela Mari
6. Inscriptions as Literature in Pausanias' Exegesis of Hellas, Yannis Tzifopoulos
7. Archaic Latin Inscriptions and Greek and Roman Authors, David Langslow
8. Inscribed Epigrams in Orators, Epigrammatic Schools, Epigrammatic Collections, Andrej Petrovic
Part II: Literary Epigraphy: Complementarity and Competition
9. Epigraphic Literacy in Fifth-Century Epinician and its Audiences, Joseph Day
10. Kleos versus Stonea Lyric Poetry and Contexts for Memorialization
11. Inscriptions on the Attic Stage, Julia Lougovaya
12. Aristotle's Hymn to Virtue and Funerary Inscriptions, Pauline LeVen
13. Speaking from the Tomba The Disappearing Epitaph of Simonides in Callimachus, Aetia Fr. 64 Pf.
14. Inscriptional Intermediality in Latin Literature, Martin Dinter
15. Furor Epigraphicus: Augustus, the Poets, and the Inscriptions, Joceylne Nelis-Clement and Damien Nelis
16. Epitome and Eternity: Some Epitaphs and Votive Inscriptions in the Latin Love Elegists, Luke Houghton
17. Shuffling Surfaces: Epigraphy, Power, and Integrity in the Greco-Roman Narratives, Alexei Zadorojnyi
Index