'Vox tua nempe mea est'. Dialogues with the dead in Roman funerary commemoration

In Roman funerary commemoration, the dead could communicate with the living through the medium of the words inscribed on their monuments, provided these words were read. The reader had a crucial role to play in the transmission of information and sentiments, and this is especially the case with the epitaphs that are referred to in this study as ‘speaking’ stones. These addressed the traveller, stranger or passer-by, asked him to read the text, and often implored him to speak a greeting to the person whose tomb the monument marked. Although there is little doubt that Romans could and often did read some documents silently, it was customary to read epigraphic texts aloud. In reading funerary inscriptions and uttering the words whilst reading them, the reader lent his voice to the deceased and engaged in a verbal dialogue with the dead. The invitation to interact with the words of the deceased was extended not only to surviving friends and family, but also, and even primarily, to people who had never known the commemorated while they were alive. Although ‘speaking’ sepulchral inscriptions have been of some interest to scholars exploring a range of themes expressed in Roman funerary commemoration, there has been no systematic collection of such epitaphs, nor, I think, has their significance truly been appreciated (Purdie 1935; Lattimore 1942; Häusle 1980; Koortbojian 1996; Bodel 2001). Literary and linguistic aspects have represented the main focus of studies of the ‘speaking’ stones, especially those with inscriptions written in verse, but this is a rather narrow and one-sided approach to the material (Lissberger 1934; Hoogma 1959; Popova 1976; Cugusi 1996; Sblendorio Cugusi 2005). The data collected and presented here consist of 554 funerary inscriptions in Latin gathered by examining all CIL volumes as well as other corpora, epigraphic journals and collections of verse inscriptions. The earliest ‘speaking’ stones in Latin date to the late second and early first century BC, the latest to the sixth century AD. The vast majority of these (300) are from Italy, and of those 120 are from Rome. The Iberian peninsula has produced 115, followed by Africa with 53, North-East Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean with 46, the four Gauls with 26, the German provinces with 13, and finally Britain with a single stone. Numerically these represent a very small proportion of the total known Roman funerary inscriptions (Saller & Shaw 1984: 124); despite their modest numbers, however, the ‘speaking’ inscriptions are of considerable importance in illuminating how the reading of monumental texts depended on the visual, vocal and oral senses. In this study, the collected data are used to explore how the survival of the memory of the deceased in epigraphy required active participation by the viewer in voiced communication, and how the response of the living was thought to bridge the gap between them and the dead in a symbolic way. It is an essential part of this investigation to explore the ability of individuals to read and write, especially since epitaphs that required reading and a verbal response also appear in regions that traditionally are ranked rather low in literacy rates. The information recorded in the inscriptions is used to assess the status of those who set up such monuments and those who were given them in order to gain some insight into the significance of at least appearing to be literate in certain sectors of society. Finally, we can explore the extent to which this act of speaking or reciting the words inscribed in stone may have been perceived as performative magic.