23 V 2024: Anna Sitz (Tübingen), The writing on the wall: the fates of ancient inscriptions in late antique cities

While the fates of ancient statues and temples in late antiquity have been well-researched, what happened to ancient inscriptions in the period of Christianization has not. This lecture examines both the written sources and the physical inscribed stones themselves to argue that ancient inscriptions were not simply witnesses of the ancient past in late antique cities, but instead were building blocks of the late antique present. A close reading of the late antique written sources indicates that real or imagined ancient inscriptions frequently served historiographic aims in narratives, especially as they were increasingly attributed with prophetic power. Turning to the physical inscribed stones that have come down to us archaeologically, this lecture then presents a particular group of twenty-three ancient inscriptions showing the targeted erasure of pagan material. A consideration of the grammar and techniques of erasure reveals that these rasurae are not indicators of a fanatical Christian damnatio memoriae of the pagan past, but rather of a measured distancing from that past