Florilegia

The problem with regional corpora is that they are very hard to use, even in cases where they have been well indexed. The consequence is that scholars have often turned to volumes that might be termed ‘‘greatest hits’’ of epigraphy, or, in technical parlance, florilegia. The problem with the comprehensive collections for the Greek world was recognized even as the later volumes of CIG were in preparation, which is why, in 1877, the German publisher Georg Hirzel invited Wilhelm Dittenberger to produce a collection of texts that would be ‘‘especially useful for the study of Greek history and institutions.’’ Dittenberger responded with the first edition of his Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum (SIG).

The history of SIG is something of a paradigm for the expanding scope of classical studies during the second half of the nineteenth century. In the first edition, completed in 1883, Dittenberger restricted himself to texts relating to regions that were Greek prior to the time of Alexander, from earliest times to Justinian’s closure of the philosophical schools in Athens. He also decided to exclude all verse inscriptions on the grounds that they were already being edited by Georg Kaibel. He retained his organizing principle in the second edition of 1898, though in that volume he eliminated texts from Hellenistic times, deciding instead to produce a supplement, in two volumes, that would accommodate the Greek east after Alexander. The result is the second of the great collections, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae (OGIS), published in two volumes and containing 775 texts. Dittenberger completed work on OGIS in 1903 and died three years later. In 1911, a new team of scholars set to work updating and expanding SIG, adding new sections that included civic decrees, texts relating to religious institutions and to private life. The third edition, which includes 1,268 texts, was completed in 1920. Although many of the texts included in SIG and OGIS have subsequently been re-edited, both collections retain immense value because of the extraordinarily astute annotation, philological and historical, with which Dittenberger and his later editors equipped their texts.

Shortly after Dittenberger completed OGIS, Ren(e Cagnat began a collection of Greek texts relating to the Roman Empire, Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas Pertinentes (IGR). The project, originally conceived in four volumes, was never completed - volume 2 on mainland Greece was not done at all, and volume 4 was published as it stood when its editor, George Lefaye, died, despite the fact that he had not been able to cover many major cities of the eastern empire. Despite the fact that neither the annotation or proof-reading attain the consistent level of excellence found in Dittenberger’s work, IGR’s attempt at comprehensive coverage of civic epigraphy and broad geographic coverage make it a valuable guide to the Greek epigraphy of the Roman world.

The inspiration for Dittenberger’s SIG came from earlier florilegia devoted to Latin inscriptions. Wilhelm Henzen began work on a collection to replace those of Orellius (with whom he had worked as an assistant) and a subsequent work by Gustav Wilmanns, Exempla inscriptionum latinarum, which appeared in 1878. Henzen died in 1887 with the work as yet incomplete, and, after consultation amongst his friends, the project was given over to Hermann Dessau, another scholar of immense talent. As Dessau himself wrote, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae (ILS) represents the progress of epigraphy during the nineteenth century (ILS pref., iii). The earlier collection of Orellius was hampered by the fact that Orellius himself had seen very few actual inscriptions, and had to work from texts collected by a number of authors of dubious ability, or published in journals, ‘‘by authors of whose faith and learning there was no evidence... now, with the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum almost complete, with supplements published without delay, we have arrived at a point where, in cases of inscriptions once seen but subsequently lost, there is scarcely any doubt’’ (ILSpref., iv). He is quite frank that the book as it stands really is a summary of the historically significant inscriptions published in CIL.

Dessau’s ILS contains 9,400 Latin texts with an appendix of 150 Greek inscriptions in three volumes divided into five parts. The first volume is in ten chapters, of which the first two contain monuments of historical significance from the republican period and inscriptions relating to the imperial house from Augustus to the Byzantine emperor Constans II (641-68 ce) (ILS 839). The third chapter includes foreign kings from Juba (ILS 840) to the Vandal king Gelimer (ILS 860). Chapters four and five deal with senators from the late republic to Basilus, the last consul (in 541), and with men and women of equestrian rank. In the case of equestrians the texts are divided according to the highest rank that the person held, with praetorian prefects (ILS 1321-34) preceding prefects of Egypt, the annona and the vigiles (ILS 133547), and then procurators (ILS 1348-472). Imperial freedmen and women are the subject of chapter six, followed by magisterial assistants and public slaves in chapter seven. Chapter eight deals with grants of citizenship. Chapter nine is concerned with inscriptions relating to soldiers, while chapter ten collects inscriptions relating to famous men of letters (ILS 2915-56). The first part of volume two consists of four chapters: inscriptions relating to cults, organized by cult (ILS 2957-5050a), texts relating to public entertainments, organized according to type (ILS 5051-316), public works, boundary stones, and private projects (ILS 5317-6043), and texts relating to municipal government (ILS 6044-7209), a selection that ranges from municipal codes (ILS 6085-9) and imperial letters on matters pertaining to civic institutions (ILS 6090-2), to Pompeian graffiti (ILS 6398-445f). Volume two, part two contains five chapters including inscriptions relating to collegia (ILS 7211-365), texts relating to private slaves and members of various urban professions (ILS 7366817), funerary monuments (ILS 7818a-8560), inscriptions on various tools and other instruments of private life, including brick stamps, amphorae, lamps etc. (ILS 8561-742), and inscriptions that are otherwise unclassifiable, ranging from an inscribed divinatory model of a liver (ILS 8743), calendars (ILS 8744-5), curse tablets (ILS 8746-57), texts carved on Egyptian monuments (ILS 8758-60) and what appears to be a lex convivialis (ILS 8761). There follows a brief collection of Greek inscriptions relating to Roman administration (ILS 8762-883). The collection concludes with an appendix of texts that came to light after work on the collection began (ILS 8884-9522) along with addenda and corrigenda and two volumes of excellent indices.

The basic principle upon which the florilegia are organized is that texts relating to specific types of activity should be read together. In the case of wide ranging works such as ILS, OGIS, and SIG this does cause some problems, especially in attempting to categorize inscriptions: how to deal with texts that fit into more than one category? To take just a few of the most obvious issues, important texts for the relationship between emperor and Senate, such as the decree of 177 ce relating to prices for public performers, is placed amongst inscriptions relating to entertainers (ILS 5163); one of the most important statements of Constantine’s religious policy, the letter to Orcistus, is relegated to the section on imperial letters to cities (ILS 6091); the acts of the Arval brethren, which offer crucial information on the structure of the upper class, are placed with religious texts (ILS 5026-41); the texts relating to centurions all deal with equestrians, most of the famous literary figures are senators, and so forth. None of these are unreasonable choices, but they are all choices that distort the information offered in other parts of the collection.

Insofar as inscriptions necessarily reflect the totality of relationships connected with any public statement, they inevitably reflect interrelationships between groups in Roman society. For that reason it often makes more sense to collect all texts concerned with specific types of activity regardless of formal type (Robert 1961: 25). There is perhaps no better example of why this should be so than Robert’s own masterful study of gladiators in the Greek East (supplemented by a series of publications of work done in subsequent seminars) (Robert 1940). In the area of Roman administration, Michael Crawford’s collection of Roman laws and statutes from the early republic through Tiberius has become a crucial starting point for the study of Roman procedure (Crawford 1996). Even though it is now somewhat dated, Robert Sherk’s collection of Roman documents from the Greek east remains an invaluable guide to the way in which Roman administration was received in the Greek east (RDGE), while John Oliver’s collection of epigraphic and papyrological constitutions of Roman emperors is a crucial tool for the study of the role of the emperor in the government of the empire (Oliver and Clinton 1989), especially now that it can be supplemented by Tor Hauken’s collection of petitions to emperors (Hauken 1998). The study of the governing classes, which likewise must begin with epigraphy, has been reshaped by work such as Werner Eck’s studies of senators from Vespasian to Hadrian (Eck 1970) or his work on the organization of Italy (Eck 1979), or of Roman women by Raepsaet-Charlier (1987). We will return shortly to the way in which H.-G. Pflaum’s extraordinary epigraphic study of imperial procurators (Pflaum 1950; 1960-1) has enabled us to see structures that are largely invisible from other sources.