Lecture
Other Voices: The Linguistic Remains of Pre-Roman Italy
- Date
- Tuesday 14 July 2026
- Time
- Address
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 0.11
Abstract
Wisława Szymborska’s poem Głosy ‘Voices’ depicts the views the Roman elite might well have had of the other nations of ancient of Italy:
Deplorable are small peoples.
Their insolence bears watching
beyond each new river, O Aulus Junius.
I feel threatened by every new horizon.
That’s how I see the problem, O Hostius Melius.
To that I, Hostius Melius, reply to you, O Appius Papius,
Forward. Somewhere out there the world must have and end.
Szymborska’s poem resonates uncannily with the deconstruction of “defensive imperialism” offered in Jerzy Linderski’s 1984 classic paper “Si vis pace, para bellum”. But the Romans did not succeed in wiping out every trace of the culture of their neighbors. In this talk I will introduce some of the most striking remains of the other peoples of ancient Italy including a humble bilingual Oscan and Latin tile from Pietrabbondante signed with a footprint, the enigmatic iuvila inscriptions from Capua, the Pompeian eítuns inscriptions form the time of Social Wars, the last serious resistance of the Sabellic peoples to Roman hegemony, and the final gasp of Oscan literacy found etched on a brothel wall. Finally, I will turn to the Umbrian Iguvine Tables from Gubbio (ancient Iguvium), the most extensive and coherent expression of a non-Roman theological system in ancient Italy. We will trace the historical trajectory of these texts from a period when Rome hardly mattered to the time when a Latin colophon was necessary for the Iguvines to know the content of their own religion.
This lecture is part of the Summer School in Languages and Linguistics, but is open to anyone who is interested.