Inscriptions, archives, and dossiers

Ever since the early nineteenth century, historians have looked to archives to correct the inherent biases of narrative history. Inscriptions look as if they should have the status of archival documents, and, at times, they even appear to be related to archival collections since there are some inscriptions that reflect the nature of public archives, or are themselves extracts from civic archives. Other texts, such as the decree of the Senate of 177 ce on the prices of public combatants are similarly archival in that they contain the actual acta of a meeting of the Senate, and provide important evidence for the way in which records were kept (the extract from a speech by Marcus Aurelius that is said to be ‘‘verbatim’’ is in fact severely truncated in summary) (ILS 5163).

An inscription from Dmeir in Syria reflecting a dispute over the priesthood of the temple of Zeus is simply an extract from the imperial acta of the event, while the text contained on the tabula Siarensis appears to contain both the senatus consultum that summarized possible honors for Germanicus and the final lex establishing what those honors would be (SEG 17 no. 746, with Stolte 2003; Crawford 1996: nos. 37-8).

Elsewhere the fact that government was conducted domestically by public decree, and internationally through the exchange of letters, meant that selections from state archives might be inscribed in public places. The earliest examples of this sort of activity derive from fifth-century Athens - the public inscription of a series of decrees in favor of Methone in Macedonia - and fourth-century Caria, in the form of a series of decrees concerning attempts on the life of the satrap Mausolus (ML 65; GHI2 54, with J. K. Davies 2005: 332-4). Extant examples increase in frequency after Alexander, and include not only related dossiers such as that concerning tyrants at Eresus ( GH1191), but now as well collections of letters from kings, emperors, and other peoples that reflect upon the standing of a community (S. M. Sherwin-White 1985: 74-5). The typical ‘‘history wall,’’ as many of these publications may reasonably be termed, was inscribed on part of a centrally located public monument, such as the wall of a temple, the entrance to a theater, or outside a shrine to the emperors (S. M. Sherwin-White 1985: 69-72; J. Reynolds 1982: 33-7; J. Reynolds 1978; Oliver and Clinton 1989 nos. 8-12, 108-18; Chaniotis 2003; J. K. Davies 2005: 334 n. 32). The functional aspect of these walls is underlined by texts inscribed on a wall of the temple of Zeus at Baetocaece that included a dossier of letters from Hellenistic kings that proclaimed the temple’s privileges, below a favorable response from Valerian asserting that the ancient benefits that the temple had obtained from these kings must be maintained in the face of a challenge from an ‘‘adversary’’ (IGLS 4028). In a less spectacular, but equally telling instance, an inscription from the Esquiline Hill in Rome offers what appears to be a verbatim transcript of a hearing before praefecti vigilum who held in favor of the association of fullers (FIRA7 no. 188). In this case, of course, it is the fullers who are interested in making sure that the record of their success is visible to all.

‘‘History walls’’ differ from ordinary civic decrees and letters in that they were assembled over a period of time to form a coherent group. Also, unlike civic decrees and important letters, they were not necessarily verbatim transcripts of the original (J. Reynolds 1978: 113-14). The fact that these texts are selected for publication means that they are not true archives; public inscription was a selective process and we cannot directly access the content of any public or private archive through this medium (Boffo 1995: 97). The problem with ancient collections underlines a difficulty no less characteristic of modern collections of inscriptions: they are a record of fortuitous discoveries. While we may learn a great deal from these collections, we also need to be conscious that we can only rarely, and for only very short periods of time, examine specific practices within specific locations. As we shall see when we turn to papyri, all of these collections are better referred to as dossiers than actual archives, a distinction that papyrologists draw between texts that were once part of a group and that have been found in their original context (an archive) as opposed to those that have been grouped together by the work of modern scholars (a dossier) (p. 61-2 below).