C hapter 2: Inscriptions and the C ataloguin g o f th e Classical W orld
The most lasting accomplishments of the sixteenth-century epigraphic scholars were the collection, classification and publication of corpora of inscriptions. T he crow ning achievement was the collection edited by Jan G ruter, published in 1602-3, w hich included over 12,000 examples and remained a standard reference w ork until the nineteenth century. The list of scholars and books consulted in the preface to G ru te r’s w ork provide an example of how im portant the collaboration between scholars I examined in the previous chapter was to epigraphic scholarship of the period. In this chapter I will examine G ru te r’s and p rio r collections in order to dem onstrate the compilers’ preoccupations w ith w here the value of epigraphic evidence lay, and to dem onstrate the sort of scholarship th at could result from the docum entation of the ancient w orld in this form. T here are very few examples of scholars defining their reasons for compiling such collections, or suggesting w hat they think that they could be used for, but an examination of w hat they did in practice provides some clear examples.
U ntil around 1540 syllogai of inscriptions were nearly always com posed w ith geographical concerns foremost. M anuscript collections of material had tended to be arranged along geographical lines, according to where the inscriptions were discovered by the hum anist who had transcribed them , and if nothing else included brief details of w here the inscription was found. As we saw in the introduction, both m anuscript and printed collections focussed on particular places, rather than on themes. The m ain m otive of these local collections, which continued to be produced well into the seventeenth century,^ was to reflect civic pride, proving Rom an origins o r even confirming that famous figures from R om e’s past came from their city. In his history of the early development of Milan, Alciato refers to a letter of Pliny the younger to show that the general Verginius Rufus came from Milan, and follows this up by quoting three memorials to members of the Virginius gens in and around the city to support Pliny.^
* G ood examples o f collections o f inscriptions o f this sort made in the period under review include those in Bernardo Scardeone’s D e A n tiqu itate Urbis P atavii, &■ claris civibus P atavinis, lib ri tres
(1560), Jean P oldo d ’A lbenas’s Discours historial de 1‘antique et illustre cité de N ism es (1560) and G uillaum e Paradin’s Mémoires de PHistoire de Lyon (1573). AU three end their w orks w ith extensive collections o f inscriptions.
It is this scholarly environm ent that the collection of inscriptions published in 1534 by Petrus Apianus and Bartolomaeus Amantius represented, am bitiously entitled Inscriptiones sacrosanctae vetustatis non illae quidem romanae, sed totius fere orbis? A lthough later critics have pointed out the lack of critical acumen that went into the collection, the num ber of texts collected from earlier m anuscript sources represents an impressive achievement. It runs to over 500 pages of inscriptions, and includes both those from Europe, as well as a few purporting to be from Africa and Asia. The order of inscriptions is geographical: they are divided by country, which the compilers claimed had not been done in their sources.^ W hereas earlier hum anists had collected material to show the Rom an origins of their cities, Apianus and A m antius had a greater aim, to reflect the scope of the ancient Rom an empire. But their motives for this were patriotic, just as the earlier hum anists' were. By dem onstrating the scale of the ancient R om an em pire they drew explicit attention to the extent of the dom inions of Charles V (to w hom Apianus had been tu to r and astronom er), the m odern Rom an em peror. T heir reason fo r starting the collection w ith inscriptions from Spain was not due to the quality of the m aterial, but rather ‘Q uod totius Imperii caput illhic habemus, videlicet invictissimum, foelicissimum, piissimum Carolum Q uintum R om anum Im peratorem , cuius admiranda pietas foelicitas ac d e m e n tia uti est prim a & m axim a,’^
A sea change in attitudes towards the potential value of epigraphic evidence seems to have occurred shortly after the publication of Apianus and A m antius’s volum e. O u r first clear evidence for a change of thinking is contained in the letter Claudio Tolom ei sent to C ount Agostino de’ Landi in N ovem ber 1542 outlining a proposal from the Accademia della Virtu^ an encyclopaedic project stem ming from the text of Vitruvius,* His sum m ary of this undertaking is sufficiently detailed to suggest that it was not entirely hypothetical: indeed, the appearance of Guillaume Philandrier’s comm entary on Vitruvius in 1544 should be seen as the first part of it.^ The encyclopedia was to be in tw enty books: the first seven of these w ould deal w ith the text of
^ O n the w ork , see M. D a ly D avis, Archaologie der A n tik e, pp, 88-9,
P. A pianus and B. A m antius, Inscriptiones sacrosanctae vetustatis, sig. c iiiv, A ntiquitates quas h oc libro