Lampas - Volume 54, Issue 1, 2021

This contribution discusses a selection of remarkable verse inscriptions from the city of Athens. Such inscriptions should not be evaluated as subliterary pieces of poetry exclusively relevant within their local, spatial context. Instead, we argue that it makes sense to compare them with other poetry known from antiquity. We point at formal and thematic relationships between poems known from stones and via manuscripts, and also analyse a few Athenian verse inscriptions from Roman times that clearly reflect literary developments known from Hellenistic and Second Sophistic periods.

This article offers a brief introduction to the most frequent type of inscription: funerary inscriptions or epitaphs. The article offers a chronological overview from the Archaic period to late Antiquity, with an emphasis on Athens. It opens with a brief discussion of the archaeological and ritual contexts in which funerary inscriptions were set up, followed by a discussion of archaic epigrams and the social strategies that lay behind them. This is followed by a discussion of public and private graves that shows how epigraphic habits changed over time. The article continues with a discussion of funerary epigraphic habits outside Athens and closes with a few examples of Christian epitaphs.

This paper offers a presentation of the genre of honorific inscriptions, engraved on statue bases. This type of inscriptions has received a lot of recent scholarly attention and is particularly valuable to illuminate the workings of civic societies of the Hellenistic and Imperial periods. The paper first reflects on the chronology of the genre, which expands as the habit of engraving honorific decrees simultaneously declines. Then it studies the actors involved in the honorific transaction and establishes the differences (but also the points of contact) between public and private honorific inscriptions, while shedding light on the actions and qualities that may be worthy of the honour of a statue. Finally, it returns to the identity of the honorandi, whose status and social prof ile can vary greatly. The engraved texts thus may publicize relationships on the scale of a city, a region, a kingdom or an empire.

This article is an introduction to a group of Ancient Greek inscriptions that may be called ‘ritual norms’ (also known as leges sacrae, ‘sacred laws’). These are epigraphical documents concerning rituals that are performed in the context of specific cults, and which are of a prescriptive character. The article discusses three key questions. In the first part of the article I aim to answer a basic question: what are ritual norms? The second question concerns the function of ritual norms. The third part of the article is about the way in which ritual norms acquire authority. How were they considered legitimate and enforceable? A separate section concerning authority is reserved for the use of tradition (anchoring and anchoring innovation) in this genre.

Most well-known inscriptions are monumental texts carved on stone. In this contribution, on the other hand, we focus on small, often informal texts scratched or stamped on rocks, metal surfaces and pottery. To this type of so-called ‘little epigraphy’ belong for instance graffiti, ostraca, weights and measures, curse tablets, etcetera. Although the texts themselves are usually very short, together they constitute a large corpus.

This contribution contains brief, introductory guidance on how to read Greek inscriptions. It discusses basic aspects of early Greek scripts, in particular the ‘light-blue’ alphabet of Athens as it was in use until the end of the 5^th century BCE. Also included are sections on scriptio continua, punctuation, and numericals. Furthermore, some information is offered on spelling, phonology, morphology and syntax. Finally, the discourse units of a prototypical Athenian decree are analysed and related to underlying political procedures.

This survey offers a brief introduction to the main bibliographic and heuristic tools for the study of Greek epigraphy with links to epigraphic websites.