Full Description
Tombstones provide the largest single category of epigraphical evidence from the worlds of ancient Greece and Rome, and their inscriptions have been widely studied with reference to art and cultural history, ancient social history, prosopography and onomastics. But even though students of history and archaeology devote extensive attention to death and burial in antiquity, epigraphy - the study of inscriptions - remains, for many, an abstruse subject. By marrying epigraphy and death, the contributors to this collection hope to encourage that wider audience to consider the importance of inscribed tombstones. The book opens with an introduction to the ways in which these funerary monuments can illuminate the society and history of Greece and Rome. Subsequent chapters explore such diverse topics as fifth-century funerary sculpture, the commemoration of infants, social and ethnic identity and the relevance of epigraphical corpora. Inscribed tombstones shed light on almost every area of ancient life, ranging from the personal to the political, economic and religious. Epigraphy is the fascinating legacy in stone of the men, women and children of antiquity.
