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 of inscriptions.

I AM DEVASTATED. 

Adding horns to Mommsen seemed appropriate immediately following this afternoon’s seminar. As far as I am aware, he was not in fact “behorned.”

When teaching Roman social history, I ran special workshops for students to show them where to access the CIL and how to properly reference it, along with another of Mommsen’s projects, the legal text, Digest of Justinian. 

I have used and encouraged the use of epigraphic material for more than two decades, while always trying to contextualise this as material culture, and I had no idea that the creator of this resource, that I have loved and promoted, systematically stripped this context away. I have spent hours trying to marry up inscriptions to archaeological reports in the past, and now I know why it has been so damned difficult!

Upon reflection it makes a lot of sense. 

Mommsen began the CIL in 1853. 170 years ago, archaeology was not exactly the scientific study it is today. It was still to some extent an offshoot “cabinets of wonders” and private collecting while on grand tours. At this time also, classical philology was the king of studies into the European past. Mommsen’s approach really was a reflection of the academic biases of his time. 

But I am sorely annoyed that I had no idea that this was a guiding principle at the time of the CIL’s creation, and therefore had not passed knowledge of this weakness on to students and others. Really, it is in an attempt to address this that I have written this blog. 

On the plus side, Dr Ehmig is an archaeologist, and she has been spending some of her precious time and resources looking at the CIL archive: more than 170 years’ worth of diaries, printing notes, and squeezes which in some cases have preserved some of the context which Mommsen removed from the printed editions. There are hundreds of archive boxes each containing hundreds of papers. This archive is available for academic research, both by visiting in person and contacting for special assistance remotely.

For ages, I thought my inability to extract contextualising material from the CIL was the result of an academic weakness on my part. My poor Latin, maybe? Today I found out I was looking for something that was never there. So, reassuring yet frustrating.

By all means, use epigraphic material. Use the CIL. But don’t waste your time trying to find references to archaeological context in it, but know that further information might be found in the CIL archive.

Further information about the CIL, its history, and its archive can be found on its website here.