With respect to the latter phenomenon, we may recall Lotte Hedeager’s
argument, advanced in her discussion of status markers in north European
iron-age societies, that the prevalence of status assertion corresponds to
periods of insecurity and social change: in other words, there is less need to
display your wealth or status if no one is challenging it.^19 Following that
logic, we might read from the Roman results relative security about status
in the early period, coupled with insecurity about property lines, and the
reverse—insecurity about status, security about property—in the later
centuries. It is worth noting that of the dedications in the earliest period,
six are by anonymous donors to deities; the only one that names people as
both donor and recipient (namely, the Lapis Satricanus) is the exception
that proves Hedeager’s rule, for within a few years of its placement in the
temple of Mater Matuta, the structure was burned by a rebel army, the
dedication overthrown, and the inscription buried in the foundation of a
new building.
20
Competitive display by newly emergent elites (e.g., the
family inscriptions of the Scipiones,CILI, pp. 11–15) can be understood
as further illustration of the connection between status assertion and status
insecurity, although in this case the status that is insecure is one that is still
sought after: will past achievements entitle the clan and its descendants to
extend their authority forward in time?
More generally, the tentative results offered here for epigraphic writing
in the Roman republic provide an interesting prequel to Elizabeth
Meyer’s and Greg Woolf’s discussions of the relationship between epi-
graphic writing and social status under the early empire in their articles of
1990 and 1996 respectively. The concern to ‘‘fix an individual’s place
within history, society and the cosmos,’’ as Woolf puts it,^21 although it
certainly intensified during the Augustan era and subsequent periods
of social and cultural change, has its roots in the competitive, inclusive,
and contested nature of Roman identity evidenced from earlier periods
of history, perhaps especially the end of the third and beginning of
the second centuriesB.C., precisely the era in which Roman literary
culture took form. Epigraphic display both advances one’s position in
intra-Roman struggles for status and secures one’s position in the ever-
strengthening Roman community. In answer to the question, why did an
expanded literate culture take so long to develop at Rome, one answer
might be, because that’s how long it took for the Romans to require
clarification of their status and identity as Romans.
22
- Hedeager 1992.
- For the history and interpretation of the inscription see, among others, Versnel 1980,
Coarelli 1995, Habinek 2005a, 37 40. - Woolf 1996, 29.
- It might also be argued that the Roman inscriptional habit of the late Republic
derives in part from the influence of Hellenistic Greek inscriptions. In general I find such
arguments unpersuasive on their own, because they deny the recipient culture’s agency in
choosing which practices to be influenced by and under what circumstances. Even if Greek
120 Situating Literacies