Introduces a wide variety of Greek inscriptions on stone slabs, pottery, bronzes, and other small objects, from simple names to more complicated texts, some in local dialects with distinctive alphabets.

An accessible introduction to Greek inscriptions that reveals their importance to ancient Greek culture. Ancient Greek inscriptions are crucially important in the effort toward understanding the cultures of Greece and the Mediterranean in antiquity. The writings provide glimpses of the behavior of the people of the time, including clues about their mindsets and larger aspirations. These public records combine word and image in a multitude of ways and are rich in the insights they offer. The inscriptions examined in this volume come from a range of objects in metal or stone that include law decrees, accounts and inventories, tributes to leaders, and funerary epitaphs. They give a broad view of interstate relations, classic historical narratives, and the political administration of various city-states while also providing new perspectives on ideas such as democracy, citizenship, gender, ethnicity, religion, and the supernatural. Author Peter Liddel emphasizes the physical form of the texts alongside their importance in understanding ancient Greek culture. Accessible and insightful, Greek Inscriptions both highlights the significance and history of these artifacts and examines their reception in the modern world.

As the first extensive survey of the ancient Greek painters’ practice of writing nonsense on vases, The So-called Nonsense Inscriptions on Ancient Greek Vases by Sara Chiarini provides a systematic overview of the linguistic features of the phenomenon and discusses its forms and contexts of reception. While the origins of the practice lie in the impaired literacy of the painters involved in it, the extent of the phenomenon suggests that, at some point, it became a true fashion within Attic vase painting. This raises the question of the forms of interaction with this epigraphic material. An open approach is adopted: “reading” attempts, riddles and puns inspired by nonsense inscriptions could happen in a variety of circumstances, including the symposium but not limited to it.