The Text, The Whole Text, and Nothing But The Text: Theodor Mommsen’s editorial approach in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum
I’ve made the joke for years now that there is no area within classics and ancient history you can study which has not already been looked at by a dead German. Given my interest in epigraphy (the study of inscriptions) and legal history, often that dead German has been Theodor Mommsen. But this afternoon I have discovered something about this man which has pissed me off. I love using material culture within its found context, and after using the collection of Latin inscriptions published within the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum ( CIL ) for decades, this afternoon I discovered that its original editor, Theodor Mommsen, deliberately sought to strip inscriptions of this context. The wonderful presentation made by Dr Ulrike Ehmig, the Managing Director of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum Research Centre at the Berlin-Brandenburgishcen Akademie der Wissenschaften, pointed out that Mommsen was contemptuous of the nascent discipline of archaeology and was only interested in the text ...
