Bøger af Dirk Booms

This book, accompanying a major 2016 exhibition at the British Museum, offers a broad survey of the island's geography and its rich mythological and historical past, while focusing on Sicily's two most artistically innovative periods.

Visitors to museums or ancient Roman sites are often confronted with Latin texts inscribed on objects or buildings from classical antiquity. To the uninitiated such Latin inscriptions can appear daunting -- a jumble of letters seemingly without structure or meaning. However, since they were meant to be understood by all levels of ancient Roman society, even those who couldn't read, these ancient inscriptions followed strict grammatical rules and standardized abbreviations that could be easily decoded. This book will teach readers -- even those with no knowledge of Latin -- how to decipher these ancient messages. Each illustrated inscription is accompanied by a transcription, a transliteration in which all abbreviations are spelled out, a translation, and finally an interpretation of the text's meaning and significance. Even the smallest piece of information in an inscription can aid classicists in reconstructing the daily lives of Romans, especially those less visible in the archaeological record: the poor, slaves, and women. In conveying devastation at the death of a loved one, comradery among soldiers, or the key events in individual lives, inscriptions can reveal much about ancient Roman history and culture.

Illustrated with the best examples of inscriptions from the British Museum's Roman collection, this book will explore the meaning of putting up public inscriptions and the standardised system of abbreviation that was used to ensure Romans from all areas of the Empire could read them. Written in the simple everyday-life Latin, they also reflect linguistic changes within society, allowing the modern day scholar to uncover the introduction of slang words and new spellings of Latin words. We may also stumble across spelling mistakes, for not everyone knew how to write Latin fluently, and often we find that words had been written phonetically.