While the past four or five decades have seen an explosion of research on Latin verse inscriptions, there has appeared no full collection of this body of text for almost a century.[1] The only comprehensive edition is still Franz Bücheler’s Carmina Epigraphica, published in 1895–97 in two volumes as part of the Anthologia Latina in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina (here: CLE I–II), and followed in 1926 by a Supplementum prepared by Ernst Lommatzsch (CLE III).[2] Now that corpus has been expanded by this sizeable volume (CLE IV,1) edited by Paolo Cugusi with the help of his long-term collaborator (and spouse) Maria Teresa Sblendorio. This volume contains verse inscriptions from the Roman provinces only; Italy and the city of Rome are to be covered in further volumes, but their contents have already been drawn up, as Cugusi writes in the preface (p. x).
Carmina Latina Epigraphica (CLE) is unique in its kind as a critical edition of all of classical Latin epigraphic poetry. The closest parallel may be the carmina epigraphica included in the digital library Musisque Deoque, but that corpus is based on CLE I–III and a supplement of 1235 verse inscriptions drawn from various publications; thus it is not a new edition of the epigraphic poems; and indeed it is not a critical edition at all. That makes CLE unique as a critical edition of reference for this kind of text. It is to be celebrated that after a pause of almost a century, this edition has now gained a new volume that is clearly the result of many years of research by Cugusi and Sblendorio, who are among the foremost experts on Latin epigraphic poetry in the world.
How does this new volume compare with the earlier tomes of Carmina Latina Epigrapica? Bücheler printed 1858 verse inscriptions (CLE nos. 1–1858) in two volumes, which run to 852 pages; Lommatzsch added 439 more (CLE nos. 1859–2299) in 160 pages. Now Cugusi and Sblendorio have added 812 inscriptions (CLE nos. 2300–3111) on 791 pages. They have also included two sections that lack serial numbers: the “Aliena” for inscriptions that quote canonical poetry such as Vergil and the Psalms (pp. 793–813) and the “Appendix: Falsa et varia” for forgeries and for inscriptions that may or may not be metrical (pp. 815–29).[3] The inscriptions in the main corpus and the two additional sections have all been ordered according to geographical criteria.
The difference in scale between this and the earlier volumes of CLE is notable. In Bücheler’s volumes (CLE I–II) an inscription took up on average less than half of a page; in Lommatzsch’s Supplementum (CLE III), it occupied a little over a third; in this new volume on the other hand, the average inscription takes up almost an entire page.[4] What has changed is not the average length of the inscriptions, but the amount of detail offered about them. In the preface (p. ix), Cugusi attributes this difference to the rate of development of epigraphy and to the growth of the secondary literature in particular. Indeed, the bibliography of this volume alone runs to 53 pages (pp. xiv–lxvi). But the greater length is due in part to a change in editorial method and focus.
Bücheler and Lommatzsch had been more concise. In CLE I–III, they had printed the text of the inscription followed in smaller type by a paragraph starting with the first place of publication, further bibliographical references, and a concise description of the inscription and its context; and an epigraphical apparatus in a separate paragraph. In CLE IV,1 on the other hand the entries start with extensive bibliographical references (including earlier editions of the inscription), followed by brief comments on the place of origin, medium and date of the inscription, all in smaller type. All editorial comments are in Latin. Then the text of the inscription is printed in larger type. There follow in smaller type not only an epigraphical apparatus, as in the earlier volumes of CLE, but also a note on the metre and a commentary of varying length, which focuses on textual and linguistic matters.
Readers will welcome the clearer presentation of the new volume, which should be easier to navigate than the dense print used by Bücheler and Lommatzsch. They may well appreciate the greater attention to detail, especially in the metrical notes and the commentary. But would it have been advisable to shorten the bibliographical references and give more space to the description of each inscription?
Perhaps due to the influence of the earlier volumes of CLE, the medium of each inscription and its date and place of origin are indicated at the end of the bibliographical references, where these crucial pieces of information are not easy to find. Often the archaeological context is not mentioned at all, even where it is significant. For example, CLE IV,1 no. 2612 (= CLEPann no. 34)[5] is described as a “Tegula graphio scripta, Aquinci reperta”; it is not added that this incised tile was found among the ruins of the palace of the governor of Pannonia Inferior.
This edition does not indicate the current place of conservation of each inscription. That is hardly unparalleled in epigraphic corpora, but in a work of reference this information would be at least as useful as full bibliographic references on each inscription, which can always be retrieved from bibliographical publications such as L’Année Épigraphique that are published or updated continuously, while the list of references in CLE IV,1 is limited by its date of publication.
The edition of each inscription often appears to reproduce an earlier critical edition, including past editions by one or both of Cugusi and Sblendorio, rather than representing a new effort at editing the text. This is understandable in view of the size of this volume and the amount of work that must have gone into it; but the photographs of inscriptions that are currently available online make it fairly easy to check transcriptions and correct mistakes. Thus, a group of inscriptions from Pannonia follow an earlier edition of Cugusi and Sblendorio (CLEPann) even where there would be reason for improvement. CLE IV,1 no. 2612 (CLEPann no. 34) amor should read a[mor]. CLE IV,1 no. 2616 (CLEPann no. 40, with images at Ubi erat lupa) line 2 [P]arcae, 4 [fle]tus and 5 f[a]tum u[el] are better written as Parcae, [fl]ẹtus and fatum uel. Elsewhere too, small corrections would be in order; CLE IV,1 no. 2422 (from Barcino/Barcelona in Hispania) should not read caeliti, as next to nothing of the first letter survives, but c̣aeliti (thus at IRC IV no. 258) or even [c]aeliti (cf. the reproduction at IRC IV plate CXXI).[6] But all the corrections are fairly trivial; they only affect the degree of certainty that we have about parts of some inscriptions.[7]
The volume is followed by ten indices. The indices that cover issues such as authorship, onomastics, religion and metre are the fruit of an in-depth study of the inscriptions and will help readers to reach a deeper understanding of this large and varied collection. It is surprising that there are no concordances that offer cross-references to other major collections of inscriptions such as CIL. These would have made it easier to locate inscriptions within this volume and they would have occupied relatively little editorial space.
In sum, this excellent volume expands the comprehensive reference edition of Latin verse inscriptions; and it does so at a high standard, with notable precision overall and offering a wealth of useful detail about every inscription. It is a valuable addition to Latin epigraphical scholarship.
Notes
[1] This review was written within the research group LITTERA (reference: 2021 SGR 00074) and the project Hacia una Epigrafía Comparada: formas, textos y funciones de las inscripciones ante coctionem del occidente romano (EpiCom) (PID2023-147994NB-I00).
[2] Franz Bücheler, Anthologia latina sive Poesis latinae supplementum, Pars posterior: Carmina epigraphica, Fasciculus I (Leipzig, 1895) and Fasciculus II (Leipzig, 1897); and Ernst Lommatzsch, Supplementum (Leipzig, 1926).
[3] The earlier volumes of CLE had included “Aliena” among the numbered inscriptions at CLE II, pp. 822–6 nos. 1785–7 and at CLE III, pp. 154–8 nos. 2292–4.
[4] While the pages of the new volume are larger than those of the earlier volumes, the fonts are larger and the layout is more spacious, so they contain roughly the same amount of text.
[5] CLEPann = Paolo Cugusi, Maria Teresa Sblendorio, Studi sui carmi epigrafici: “Carmina Latina Epigraphica Pannonica” (“CLEPann”), Bologna, 2007 (Testi e manuali per l’insegnamento universitario del latino, no. 96).
[6] IRC IV = Georges Fabre, Marc Mayer, Isabel Rodà, Inscriptions romaines de Catalogne IV. Barcino, [Barcelona-]Paris, 1997.
[7] It is a question of a different order that at CLE IV,1 no. 2613 (CLEPann no. 35), the supplement speṛ[antem] is perplexing: it is attractive on account of its sense, but the offense against the metre is a little rough even in this kind of text.