Ricerc@Sapienza

This paper deals with layout and lectional signs in metrical inscriptions from late antique Egypt, suggesting that patrons, authors and other people involved in the various stages of the production of inscriptions aimed at making the poetic nature of the texts easier to recognize for the audience. Therefore, different layout strategies, influenced also by contemporary book production, pointed out inscriptions’ metrical structure to the readers, who were supposed to read aloud them. The occasional presence of lectional signs hold the function to prevent mistakes and misunderstandings, as well as to emphasize the culture and learning of the laudandus, as well as the author. Even from this point of view, metrical inscriptions give a further proof of poetry’s social and cultural importance in late antique Egypt, and of the central role played by school education.