Abstract
AbstractThe concluding chapter emphasizes that most viewers throughout the centuries read inscriptions not as epigraphers do, with a focus on historical accuracy, but rather through the lens of their own time, place, and cultural expectations. Furthermore, the continued vitality of ancient inscriptions in late antiquity has been overlooked in part because of a scholarly fixation on spolia to the exclusion of stones preserved in place. These inscriptions, spoliated or not, created the composite, intertextual epigraphic landscapes of late antique cities and sanctuaries. The afterlives of inscriptions paralleled to some degree those of pagan statues, but divergent ontologies of words and images in this period also resulted in different treatment of these two media. Finally, this chapter underlines once more that the inscriptions considered in this book proclaimed overwhelmingly civic messages, and this was still intelligible in late antiquity. Indeed, the decisions made about epigraphic material in that period resulted in the astounding preservation of thousands of inscriptions, which has enabled the development of the highly specialized field of epigraphy today.
Publisher
Oxford University PressNew York
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