Epigraphical Research and Historical Scholarship, 1530-1603 William Stenhouse University College London A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the Ph.D degree, December 2001 ProQuest Number: 10014364 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10014364 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract This thesis explores the transmission of information about classical inscriptions and their use in historical scholarship between 1530 and 1603. It aims to demonstrate that antiquarians' approach to one form of material non-narrative evidence for the ancient world reveals a developed sense of history, and that this approach can be seen as part of a more general interest in expanding the subject matter of history and the range of sources with which it was examined. It examines the milieu of the men who studied inscriptions, arguing that the training and intellectual networks of these men, as well as the need to secure patronage and the constraints of printing, were determining factors in the scholarship they undertook. It then considers the first collections of inscriptions that aimed at a comprehensive survey, and the systems of classification within these collections, to show that these allowed scholars to produce lists and series of features in the ancient world; the conventions used to record inscriptions and what scholars meant by an accurate transcription; and how these conclusions can influence our attitude to men who reconstructed or forged classical material in this period. It then examines the sorts of information about the classical past scholars derived from inscriptions are then, with two works as case studies: the Commentariorum Reipublicae Romanae libri published by Wolfgang Lazius in 1551 and Marcus Welser’s 1594 R eru m Augustanarum Vindelicarum commentarii. The examination of the citations of inscriptions in these two historical works demonstrates how Welser derived more information from inscriptions than his predecessor and reflected technical advances in epigraphic scholarship that had taken place in the preceding years. The thesis reveals that scholars showed an increasing interest in the agencies involved in producing classical inscriptions, and argues that this led to an increasing scepticism of the value of epigraphic evidence. Finally, it surveys contemporary work on classical coins, to consider how this differs from that on inscriptions, suggesting general conclusions for the nature of antiquarian scholarship in the period. Table of contents Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 4 A Note on Transcriptions, Citations and Names 5 Introduction 6 Chapter 1: Scholars of Inscriptions and their Milieux 22 Chapter 2: Inscriptions and the Cataloguing of the Classical World 61 Chapter 3: The Representation and Reconstruction of Inscriptions 89 Chapter 4: The Use of Inscriptions as Evidence for the Ancient World 127 Chapter 5: The Manufacture of Inscriptions and the Reliability of Epigraphic Evidence 154 Chapter 6: Coins and Coin Scholarship 175 Chapter 7: Concluding Remarks 213 Abbreviations and Bibliography 225 Ackno wled gements While researching and writing this thesis at UCL, I was extremely fortunate in enjoying the financial support of an Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) Scholarship. The AHRB also gave me a travel grant to research in Italy for ten weeks, as well as funding a trip to a conference in America where I presented a paper which rose out of research I had undertaken for this thesis. The AHRB’s support has been vital for my work. The combined resources of the British Library and the Warburg Institute have made London an ideal city in which to undertake research of this sort, and I would like to thank the librarians of both institutions. For their advice on various matters as I researched this overlooked corner of historiography and classical scholarship, I am grateful to Richard Cooper, Carlotta Dionisotti, Jean-Louis Ferrary, Tine Meganck, Brian W. Ogilvie, Jan Papy, and Guido Rebecchini (who was also most generous in his hospitality at Rome). Jill Kraye, who read several chapters of the thesis, has been extremely helpful in her guidance. Tanya Pollard has been wonderfully supportive, enthusiastic and patient from the project’s inception, for which I am especially grateful. Michael Crawford’s advice, willingness to discuss issues that arose from my research, and careful reading of my written work will not be surprising to anyone who knows his generosity, in intellectual matters and beyond. To a novice Ph.D student, his sympathy and involvement as a supervisor of this project were enormously encouraging, and I hope the finished result repays his faith. A Note on Transcriptions, Citations and Names Many of the sources for this thesis are scholars’ unpublished papers and letters, written in both Latin and the vernacular. The handwriting of the scholars involved, and the state of preservation of the paper they used, presented many difficulties in reading what they wrote. In transcribing material of this sort, I have endeavoured to preserve the orthography of the original, while generally expanding abbreviations and repunctuating for clarity, but where the original was unclear there has inevitably been a degree of interpretation. Printed sources also occasionally posed problems of a similar nature, and I have tried to follow the same procedure. In citing material that exists in both manuscript and a printed edition, I have given both references where I know them, in an effort to be as comprehensive as possible. In some cases, the manuscript reference is limited simply to the number of the manuscript, or to a folio number without specifying recto or verso. I have referred to scholars by the names used most commonly in contemporary scholarship, rather than giving them all in Latin form, or in the vernacular. Thus I refer to Pighius using the Latin form, but Agustin using the Spanish. Introduction In his thesis I examine scholars’ uses of, and responses to, classical inscriptions between 1530 and 1603. I consider the environment and conditions in which men came to work on inscriptions, and how they collected, classified, and represented them. I then examine how they cited these inscriptions as historical evidence, and how they came to be increasingly interested in the agencies involved in the production of inscribed texts. Finally I compare epigraphic scholarship with numismatic scholarship, before concluding by showing how work on inscriptions should be connected with wider intellectual trends in this period. The sixteenth-century study of inscriptions is not a subject that has attracted much attention over the past hundred years, either from those people interested in the history of epigraphy,’ or from intellectual historians working on historiography. In this study I demonstrate that this lack of attention is undeserved. Not only is this a period of considerable importance in the development of epigraphic techniques, but the sophistication and insight these scholars show in dealing with inscriptions represent important stages in the broadening of the range of sources used to write history, and in moves to question the reliability of those sources. While there has been little recent research on inscriptions in general, the past two decades have seen an increasing interest in the influence and effects of the study classical antiquities in the Renaissance, a movement conventionally known as antiquarianism. Research in this area was common at the end of the nineteenth century, spurred no doubt by the work to assemble corpora of information about the classical world, but was largely been neglected from the early years of the twentieth century. Recent interest, however, has resulted in illuminating studies on individual scholars, notably Carlo Sigonio, Onofrio Panvinio, * * The compilers of the Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum {CIL) consulted a huge range of epigraphic manuscripts in their efforts to collect details of all Latin inscriptions, and their comments on individual collectors (particularly those at the beginning of volumes II, VI and IX) are still invaluable, if little consulted. More or less the only work that attempts to survey this area is the Epigrafia Latina of Ida Calabi Limentani, which includes a survey of the history of epigraphy by theme (pp. 39-124). Isolated scholars of classical antiquity have shown more interest in the history of the discipline, particularly Heikki Solin, the publication of whose new edition of part of CIL X is imminent, and Ginette Vagenheim. Antonio Agustin, and Pirro Ligorio,^ as well as in general studies of the antiquarian movement/ This thesis synthesizes these approaches: by examining a particular scholarly strand within the movement, I will show how scholars interacted to share material and problems, as well as demonstrating how antiquarian research resulted in historical scholarship. By pursuing this project, I hope to challenge the received notion of the antiquarian, a term which, at