ESR 1 The Carmina Latina Epigraphica on Funerary Monuments of Rome

Timo Eichhorn

Objectives
The project will investigate the non-Christian funerary verse inscriptions in the city of Rome. These carmina epigraphica are an exceptional research field still largely to be explored. They demonstrate a freedom of expression unmatched by most of their prose counterparts. They give voice to social characters not represented in Latin literature and sometimes play with this literary tradition.

The funerary carmina epigraphica of Rome will be published in a critical digital edition with commentary. The study will reconstruct original texts as far as possible and analyse their poetic traditions like figures of speech or quotations of poems in a direct form or adapted to the new inscribed context. The regional analysis, which will provide fascinating new insights in the characteristics of epigraphical verse production in Rome, is to be addressed in the commentary.

Within the great number of pagan carmina Latina epigraphica from Rome, the corpus will be limited to those inscriptions composed in elegiac couplets and which are not included in the still fundamental editions by Franz Bücheler (1895/1897) and Ernst Lommatzsch (1926). In this way, an in-depth analysis and commentary of inscriptions that are written in the distinctive metre of funerary poetry will be ensured – especially as some of these have received only little attention due to rather recent publication or as they are scattered over different editions and journals.

More importantly, the work on the city-of-Rome-edition will form an essential basis for discussions within our ESR team and provide key material for comparative studies of all the other ESR projects.

Expected Results
A doctoral thesis on the objectives mentioned above to build up a general expertise in Roman cultural heritage and Latin philology, and professional skills in digital editing.