Introduction: the Reception of Ancient Inscriptions

This introduction opens with an exploration of the modern organisation of epigraphical knowledge, considering its relationship to both antiquarianism and scholarship and its relationship to the subject of the current book, epigraphical references in ancient literary texts. The current fragmentation of the study of ‘literary epigraphy’ calls for a volume which will bring together literary, historical and epigraphical approaches to the subject. The subject of ‘literary epigraphy’ offers much to epigraphers, ancient historians, literary scholars, but also invites us to rethink the nature of epigraphy itself: it contributes to a broader understanding of the nature and reception of epigraphy in the Graeco-Roman world. Bringing the conclusions of our contributors together, this introduction maintains that ancient encounters with inscriptions, preserved through the literary record, offer us a view of the ways in which inscriptions offered a physical and cultural backdrop for activities of all kinds; they offer us valuable insight into individuals’ reaction towards inscriptions and their manipulation of them. Both epigraphy and the idea of epigraphy offered, in antiquity, a pliable tool for claiming, maintaining and demonstrating authority, identity, morality, and power.