Siste viator

Latin Funerary Inscriptions in Ancient and Modern Times

Live on-line Course, October 29th – December 17th, 2020

Churches, streets, cemeteries, and museums are replete with funerary inscriptions that speak Latin, an immortal language through which the dead of all ages have sought to hold on to life through identities expressed in written form for those still living.

Roman funerary inscriptions represent the vast majority of the epigraphical corpus from antiquity. In officinae lapidariae inscriptionists, known as lapicidae, would typically write in capitalis form after arranging the text for the dimensions of the tombstone, each letter acting as a vehicle for allowing the deceased to engage in a dialogue with the living. For the entirety of the Middle Ages and well into the Modern Era, Latin was the language of choice for these inscriptions.

An epitaph does not necessarily have to be set in stone. In fact, in the Renaissance a great number of epitaphs were often a genre that circulated exclusively in books.

This course will examine a selection of examples of Latin epitaphs, both those written in stone and those produced for circulation in books. Each lesson will also feature Latin composition exercises with an eye to the genre of funerary inscriptions.