LINGUE E RELIGIONI NELL’ITALIA ANTICA ATTRAVERSO L’EPIGRAFIA DEL “SACRO”

Abstract

Inscriptions relevant to religion represent the most important genre within the Italy pre-Roman languages
epigraphic corpora, including Latin during the 4th-1st BCE centuries. This documentation kind provides
with invaluable evidence for each language as well as for the respective religious systems in their reciprocal
relations. They also evidence for both private and public attitudes towards worship practices and care of
holy places. In those respects, the ‘sacred’ inscriptions are a remarkable societies, institutional organizations,
political strategies and personal mobilities knowledge source. Moreover, inscriptions of this type, on one
hand, witness for sociolinguistic variations in both diachronic and synchronic perspectives, raising the more
complex relationship problem between language and religion from both theoretical and historical point of
view. On the other hand, they often mirror contacts among different languages and cultures. Finally, this
epigraphic genre significantly contributes to improve the Italy Romanization knowledge contrasting both
active and passive resistance of local communities with individual tendencies to absorption into the Roman
world. This paper follows the lines above sketched, interrelating multiple examples provided by the Italy
pre-Roman languages main epigraphic corpora, including Latin and Greek.