“Defining Late Antiquity through Epigraphy?” Ignazio Tantillo Università di Cassino e del Lazio meridionale. In his prodigious book dedicated to verse dedications for late antique governors and imperial officials (Hellenica IV Paris 1950, p. 108-110), Louis Robert proposed to define le ‘Bas-Empire’ in the eastern part of the Mediterranean as the period characterised by a very peculiar epigraphic style, distinct from the previous styles, being nonetheless refined and sophisticated. Robert stressed the unity and originality of such a late style – the life-span of which extended from the second half of the third to the sixth century - and observed the correspondence existing between its age of diffusion and the «coupures chronologiques dans les institutions et la civilisation». This was a step forward from the empirical and negative definition of late inscriptions, generally merely identified by the poor quality of their realization and connected to the general decline of written culture, as well as to social and political degeneration. Louis Robert perceived a correspondence between a period already defined in historical works as different from the previous and the successive, and the transformation of specific habit which concerned the social and political life of later roman cities in the east: the habit of setting up statues. If he did not actively periodize, nonetheless he successfully contributed to the identification, and to the recovery, of this historical phase. I can anticipate that Robert’s was an unrepeated exploit, unparalleled in other disciplines of ancient epigraphy. Still, the huge debate which has eventually developed around the definition of the last phase of antiquity involved also the epigraphy and the epigraphists. Epigraphic studies represent a very active sector of scholarship. So what has been their role in shaping the concept of Late Antiquity? How did they contribute to periodize it? How the boundaries between classical epigraphy, Christian epigraphy, medieval epigraphy in the west, and byzantine epigraphy in the east have shifted in the last fifty years? My paper aims at investigating at least some of the fundamental methodological and historiographical issues connected to these topics. For obvious reasons I do not claim to offer an exhaustive overview, nor was it my intention: some relevant topics will not be addressed, others will be treated sketchily, and only a small, selected bibliography will be provided. In the epigraphic studies, the problem of late antiquity firstly, but indirectly, emerged within the practical problem of setting boundaries between the classical and the medieval world. In 1847 Theodor Mommsen submitted his project for a general collection of Latin inscriptions, the future Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, and explained its guidelines in detail. The very first questions concerned the nature of the evidence to be collected and the chronology: «Die Sammlung soll alle römischen Inschriften umfassen. Aber wo hören diese auf und wo fangen die mittelalterlichen an?» [«The collection should include all the Roman Inscriptions. But where do these stop and where do the medieval begin?»] In half a page Mommsen resumed his points as follows: he argued that a clear-cut chronological frontier could not be traced, and joined the proposal already put forward by French scholars to include inscriptions down to the end of the VIth century, in order to ensure the publication of all the inscriptions with consular and post-consular dates. In case of ambiguity, the choice would have been left to the personal sensitivity of each editor, an empirical principle followed by the recommendation: better include than reject. The Christian inscriptions would also have been included: they were not so many outside Rome, which in any case would not include them, as G.B. De Rossi was preparing a special corpus, the ICUR1. Let us return for a moment to Mommsen’s chronological choice and its motivations. His allusion to ‘die Franzosen’ refers to the French project for an universal collection of Latin inscriptions, the most important and ambitious enterprise among those that had been propositioned in previous years by various scholars with similar purposes2. It was initiated in 1843 by the Minister Villemain (himself educated as a classicist) and abandoned in 1846 when Villemain left his mandate 3 . A special commission – composed of epigraphists, philologists, historians – had been created. As soon as August 1843 the young ‘secrétaire’ of this commission, Emile Egger was able to send an official report in which he presented the results of the preliminary work and replied to the request made by Minister himself who wanted to confine the field of inquiry to the ‘proper antiquity’ (former propositions included medieval inscriptions). Some resemblances with Mommsen’s plan can be detected in Egger’s report (Mommsen had been named ‘correspondant étranger’ of the French project in 1844 and in the autumn of that same year, during his stay in Paris, had met Egger who informed him about the advancements of the Project). For instance: «A cet égard, votre intention déjà exprimée était de vous renfermer dans l’antiquité proprement dite, et d’exclure au moins provisoirement le moyen âge. Mais où finit l’antiquité, où commence le moyen âge?» [«At this proposal, You had already expressed your intention to stick at the proper Antiquity, and to exclude, at least for the moment, the Middle Ages. But when does Antiquity finish, and when do the Middle Ages begin?»] The commission agreed that it was impossible, and unreasonable, to stop in AD 476: most of the world of the VIth century (Constantinople under Justinian, Ostrogothic Italy) was still ‘Roman’ from a social and cultural, if not institutional and juridical, point of view. The collection should thus have embraced 1 Über Plan und Ausführung eines Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Berlin 1847, published in A. Harnack, Geschichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, II, Berlin 1900, p. 523: «Die Sammlung soll alle römischen Inschriften umfassen. Aber wo hören diese auf und wo fangen die mittelalterlichen an? Einigermaßen willkürlich ist jede Zeitgrenze; nicht unzweckmäßig indes haben die Franzosen dafür das Ende des sechsten Jahrhunderts n.Chr. festgestellt, was sich besonders dadurch empfiehlt, daß die Konsulate, die vollständig zu geben wünschenswerth ist, um diese Zeit ganz aufhören. Bei den nicht chronologisch bestimmbaren Inschriften ist freilich dem Takt der Herausgeber alles überlassen. Man hat die Ansicht geäußert, daß aus der vollständigen Sammlung der lateinischen Inschriften doch die christlichen wegbleiben könnten. Es ist indes nicht abzusehen, weshalb man gegen diese, die doch ebenso gut römische Inschriften und für manches der wichtigsten Resultate eines C.I.L., wie z.B. für die Konsularfasten, Hauptquelle sind, ein Exceptionalgesetz in Anwendung bringen will. Das soll indes nicht geleugnet werden , daß diese Klasse von Inschriften mehr als alle andern arm ist an Resultaten und Interesse, daß ihre Behandlung Kenntnisse und Studien voraussetzt, die von den sonst erforderlichen unendlich weit abliegen und mehr von dem Theologen als von dem Philologen und Juristen erwartet werden können , und daß die Willkür und Inkorrektheit der Paläographie dieser Inschriften unglaubliche und durch nichts vergoltene Druckschwierigkeiten verursachen wird. In Erwägung dieser Umstände ist es ein günstiger Zufall, daß gerade jetzt Pius IX. dem Scrittore der Vaticana Cav. Rossi die Mittel zu Gebote gestellt hat zur Herausgabe seiner Sammlung der sämtlichen christlichen Inschriften der Stadt Rom, die mit Benutzung der großen schriftlichen Vorarbeiten Marini’s und der reichen Sammlungen des Vaticans gearbeitet ist und ein brauchbares Werk zu werden verspricht. Es ist zu erwarten, daß dasselbe früher erscheint, als ein C. I. L. zu Stande gebracht sein kann, so daß es letzterem entweder als werthvolle Vorarbeit, oder vielleicht selbst als integrierender Theil wird dienen können. Die christlichen Inschriften außerhalb Rom, die diese Sammlung nicht umfaßt, sind nicht zahlreich und nur auf verhältnismäßig wenige Städte beschränkt, so daß deren Redaktion, namentlich wenn die Hauptmasse der christlichen Inschriften schon bearbeitet vorliegt, wenig Schwierigkeiten machen wird» 2 As regards France alone, Villemain’s project was preceded by those of P. Le Bas and P. Mérimée. 3 A. Reinach, Un projet français de Corpus des inscriptions latines en 1838, in Revue épigraphique 2, 1914, p. 329-330; J. Scheid, Le projet français d’un recueil général des inscriptions latines, in Bartolomeo Borghesi: scienza e libertà. Colloquio internazionale A.I.E.G.L., Bologna 1981, Bologna 1982, p. 337–353; E. Gran-Aymerich, J. von Ungern-Sternberg (éd.), L’Antiquité partagée. Correspondances franco-allemandes (1823–1861), Paris 2012, p. 29. all the inscriptions dating to the VIth century. Single editors would have had the choice to include the dubious cases, especially if they could provide evidence for ancient Roman times4. Two main differences: in the French project the problem of Christian inscriptions is not explicitly addressed; the choice of confining the collection at the end of the sixth is justified on the ground of social, historical considerations, while Mommsen shows a more pragmatic and formalistic approach, without resorting to the Great history. In both projects, large autonomy is programmatically granted to editors of single volumes about including or excluding dubiously dated