A detailed research, along with a deeper analysis on the entire set of bilingual (Greek/Latin) inscriptions of Rome – which is a significant number of epigraphic documents (more than 150) of different types and content (public and private; dedicatory, sacred, sepulchral; metrical and non-metrical), which cover a wide chronological period (from I century B.C. to IV century C.E.), and come from all over the city (catacombs, sanctuaries, public spaces, etc.) – has allowed me to investigate in a deeper way and from different points of view the cultural interaction and ethnical mixture between Latin and Greek speakers in Rome. The centre and the most cosmopolitan city of the multi-faceted and multi-ethnic Roman world is surely a peculiar and favoured socio-cultural context for this kind of study. Bilingualism manifests itself in several ways, from the simple translation, to inscriptions written partly in Latin and partly in Greek for various reasons; moreover, it is worth considering, even if they are not strictly bilingual, Latin inscriptions written in Greek alphabet or with Greek expressions written in Latin characters, in order to find additional information concerning the attitude and the production of the bilingual world of Rome. Even if some of this documents have already been studied, a complete analysis of the entire group of bilingual inscriptions of Rome has not been done yet. The EDR database (Epigraphic Database Rome), on which I am currently working under the supervision of Silvia Orlandi, Associate Professor of Latin Epigraphy at Sapienza, University of Rome, has now made possible to collect, analyze and review all the bilingual inscriptions: each of them has been investigated in itself and, above all, in relation with all the other texts, studied in their historical and cultural context. EDR (www.edr-edr.it) – which is part of the International Federation of epigraphic databases EAGLE (Electronic Archive of Greek and Latin Epigraphy), and whose development is continuously in progress thanks to the work of many professors, scholars and collaborators – is aimed to collect and give a digital edition of all the Latin and Greek inscriptions from ancient Italy, Sicily and Sardinia, and it is an elaborate database, with many metadata provided (context of provenance, place of storage, material and object, size, conservation status, language, text, apparatus, editions, dating, etc.) and several possibilities of multiple queries, that allow users to do almost endless searches. The inclusion of bilingual documents of Rome in EDR will provide a new, important amount of information and will allow scholars from all over the world to learn more about this subject, and to obtain relevant and reliable data on the social, historical and cultural background of these inscriptions. The work will be completed shortly and it would be a great pleasure to share the results of our work in such a prestigious and international meeting.
