Ricerc@Sapienza

The ongoing process of digitalization of Latin and Greek inscriptions from ancient Italy in the Epigraphic Database Roma (EDR: www.edr-edr.it) leads constantly to new readings and new interpretations of epigraphic texts that have been already published, sometimes even recently. The present paper includes contributions related to imperial and senatorial inscriptions from Rome (CIL, VI 40655; 40803; 41171), a lost funerary altar for an apparitor (CIL, VI 1842), and a couple of epitaphs (AE 2015, 159 and AshLI 142).

Ancient inscriptions are an unvaluable source for our knowledge of “non classical” forms of Latin terms: archaic texts, graffiti, funerary inscriptions, inscribed instrumentum provide us a large number of examples of archaic terms, vulgar forms and grammatical errors. In the ongoing process of digitalization of these texts, different projects have found different solutions to face the problem of encoding these forms, in order to allow different kinds of linguistic search.

The history of Rome in the IVth and Vth century is full of disorders and difficulties; the city had lost its role of one and only capital of the Empire, but continued to be considered a symbol still worth of great consideration.

The via Appia never stops to provide new material to be studied: a fragmentary, unpublished inscription still preserved along the road, inmured in a modern wall, mentions a L. Cornelius Brundisinus, who was probably a magistrate of a funerary collegium. Together with another member of the same fraternity, he was responsible of the construction of a structure, that was presented as a gifte to the whole community.