“Inscribing Community” examines Greek inscriptions from Rome, between the first and fourth centuries CE, in order to understand the spaces and presentation of multicultural communities within the topography of the city. Literary sources, from Martial to Aelius Aristides, cite Rome’s multiculturalism as a defining feature of the city. These literary sources, however, separate Rome’s diverse population from the city’s built environment. For all the presentation of the city as a culturally diverse capital, did its multicultural population contribute to the topography of the city? Understanding the relationship between the city’s multicultural population and landscape comes as a challenge given the difficulties of tracing identity within material culture and the flawed preservation of Rome’s archaeological record. For this dissertation, I turn to Greek inscriptions – as both social historical texts and archaeological objects – in order to examine the organization and spaces of multicultural communities in Rome. Greek inscriptions, despite the cultural popularity of the language, remained a rarity in the landscape of Rome, accounting for less than 5% of the existing epigraphic record of the city. Within the center of Rome, inscribed Greek represented a cultural practice of the eastern half of the empire, where Greek functioned as the administrative language. When the Greek epigraphic record is mapped onto the topography of Rome, three distinct clusters of inscriptions can be seen in the areas of the Sacra Via, the Baths of Trajan, and the southern Transtiberim region. The contents of the inscriptions within these areas not only demonstrate the existence of communities organized by people from the different parts of eastern Mediterranean but also reveal their physical impression on the city. The three sites mark the only known structures and spaces devoted to multicultural communities in the urban topography of Rome. The Greek inscriptions of these three sites, when examined together, reveal the tension between motivation and perception in imperial Rome. Individuals and communities created inscriptions in Greek as an expression of their identities and native cultures. Yet, the display of inscriptions made the texts perceptible objects within the landscape of Rome, which anyone in the city might interpret in their own way. At each of the sites, imperial power mediated this tension, affecting their presentation and articulation of identity. Whether displayed in the center of the city or its periphery, Greek inscriptions in Rome represent eastern cultural identity that can also serve as a message of imperial dominance.

Le projet urbanistique et architectural lié à la construction du forum de Trajan à Rome (106 et 113 ap. J.-C) s’inscrit dans la tradition de ceux qui l’ont précédé. Pourtant ses dimensions et les travaux colossaux nécessaires à son établissement en font un projet particulièrement exceptionnel qui a entraîné la transformation totale de l’ensemble de la zone située entre les collines du Capitole et du Quirinal. Cette étude porte sur les modalités de ce réaménagement et ses conséquences non seulement sur la zone du forum, mais également sur l’ensemble du tissu urbain de la ville. Il s’agit d’analyser ce grand programme architectural en soulignant, comment, au-delà de la réalisation de la place publique, a été conçu, autour du complexe impérial, tout un ensemble urbanistique cohérent et surtout entièrement structuré par un nouveau système de circulation complexe. Le contexte urbain avant et après la réalisation du forum sont successivement étudiés et une attention particulière est accordée aux solutions architecturales adoptées afin d’intégrer les nouvelles constructions dans le tissu urbain préexistant. L’objectif est de reconstruire chronologiquement toute l’organisation urbanistique de la zone et de déterminer dans quelle mesure la construction du forum de Trajan a conditionnée le développement de l’Urbs dans son ensemble. / The urban and architectural project related to the construction of the Trajan Forum in Rome (106-113 AD) joins the tradition of its predecessors. However, its dimensions and the colossal work needed for its creation make it a one-of-a-kind project, which caused the transformation of the whole area between the Campidoglio and Quirinale hills. This study focuses on the methods of this transformation and on its impact on the proper Forum area, and on the rest of the city’s urban texture. It is an analysis of this big architectural project, beyond the public square, with particular attention to the collection of architectural solutions and to the complicated system of paths created around the imperial complex. The urban context was analysed in parallel, before and after the completion of the Forum, in order to understand better the architectural solutions adopted, and to integrate the new buildings in the pre-existing urban context. The objective is to chronologically reconstruct the whole urban setup of the area, and to determine to which extent the construction of the Trajan Forum conditioned the development of this part of the empire-period Urbs.