This paper will provide a survey of the major online resources for Greek and Latin epigraphy that are currently available. It will treat the principle capabilities, functions, and limitations of each resource.
Since the early-to-mid 1990s, digital epigraphic resources have been appearing on the World-Wide Web. These have ranged in scope from static web pages of selected inscriptions, through corpora for specific sites, to major databases that span entire regions and periods. More recently, at least one publisher has begun to bring out e-book equivalents of some of its print epigraphic materials. While there will not be time to address every “selected inscriptions” site on the web, we will undertake a comprehensive summary of the following resources:
- all the epigraphic databases operating under the aegis of the Association Internationale d'Épigraphie Grecque et Latine (Rome, Heidelberg, Bari, and Alcalá)
- the Packard Humanities Institute's Searchable Greek Inscriptions
- the Epigraphische Datenbank Clauss – Slaby
- epigraphic publications prepared by Charlotte Roueché, Gabriel Bodard, and colleagues at King's College, London (including the Inscriptions of Aphrodisias, Roman Tripolitania, and Roman Cyrenaica)
- Brill's online Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum
- other regional and special-purpose digital corpora
This overview, to be accompanied by a handout containing pertinent information, will equip attendees to locate, begin using, and evaluate the capabilities of each resource. We will treat the key issues of extent and completeness; reliability and originality; content type (e.g., images, texts, translations); usability; citation; stability; and openness, availability, and license restrictions.
In effect, the paper will provide a significant supplement to Tom Elliott et al. (eds.), “Links to web-based epigraphical resources,” first published on the website of the American Society of Greek and Latin Epigraphy ca. 1998 and last updated in 2007 [available: http://www.case.edu/artsci/clsc/asgle/links.htmll]. The published resource is demonstrably out of date, and no longer provides accurate Uniform Resource Locators (URLs; web addresses) for all listed sites, nor is its listing of “images, texts, and the inscriptions themselves” still comprehensive.