Epigraphy, Latin: Early Through Late Republican

Introduction

Roughly in the same period when the last king was expelled from Rome, the Latin epigraphic habit lost its strict dependence on the Etruscan one, which had fostered its development in the preceding centuries. During those same decades, Etruscan epigraphy itself was undergoing major changes, mainly propelled by scribal schools linked with the great sanctuaries, which precisely at this time began to play a crucial role in Etruscan civic life. Latin epigraphy was far from uniform in this early period, with almost every center boasting its own epigraphic habit as part of a strictly local identity. The city of Tibur, which shared many cultural features with the Italic world (although characterizing itself unequivocally as a Latin city), even introduced the typically middle-Italic letter-rotations. The preeminence of Rome in Latin epigraphic culture was a relatively late phenomenon, clearly accelerated by the suppression of the Latin League in 338 BCE, which led to outright Roman...