Epigraphic Consciousness

Abstract

The paper by Saller and Shaw in JRS 1984 calls for some comment on its treatment of epigraphic evidence, and especially on the question of what we can expect inscriptions to tell us about the people of a given area.A first point to make in relation to their argument is that the poorer classes throughout the empire could not in any case afford stone inscriptions. If, then, the extended family is (as could be argued) an adaptation of the nuclear family induced by poverty, rather than its biological or cultural predecessor, evidence for it will naturally tend to be absent from the epigraphic record, even if it is in fact quite common at the lowest levels of society.But my present purpose is to consider a different aspect of the use of inscriptions—the question of habit, a subject recently raised by Ramsay MacMullen. After examining the relevance of this matter to the claim by Sailer and Shaw that there was little or no local recruitment to the Roman army in Britain, it will be argued that the epigraphic evidence cannot be used to support this view.