The purpose of this research is to collect in a distinct corpus all the Latin verse inscriptions found in Roman Britain, those entirely metrical and those mixed with prose, those definitely metrical and those questionably so as well, analyse them both individually and as a block, with all the relative interconnections. The texts are also considered as evidence for a certain type of Romanisation spread in the province from the first to the fourth century AD. The aim of my research is to: - create a complete census of all the Latin verse inscriptions gathered from Roman Britain - trace the history of their discovery and map out the previous, including antiquarian, studies on them. This proves to be particularly useful for those inscriptions that experienced a tangled history and where with time some crucial details about the text and its archaeological context went missing in the accounts. - analyse the texts both from an epigraphic-historical and linguistic-philological point of view - offer fresh interpretations and supplements of the fragmentary texts - put the inscriptions in relation to their archaeological context - consider the implications for the cultural level of the province during the Roman occupation The results arc compared to those extrapolated from the metrical inscriptions found in Gallia Belgica. My investigation has clearly shown that the use of verse inscriptions in Britannia was markedly different from that in neighbouring Belgica. The comparison brings interesting conclusions and observations regarding the different approach and use of verse inscriptions in the two Roman provinces. Latin verse inscriptions represent an interesting key-study on the leve I of culture and sophistication that the Romans, together with the locals, achieved in a provincial environment. The comparative study proves the thesis that verse inscriptions do say something about the type of Romanisation of a province: the metrical texts found in Belgica are in fact quite different from those from Britannia.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:616910 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Asciutti, Valentina |
| Publisher | King's College London (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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