=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3834/paper4
|storemode=property
|title=FAIR Turn in Epigraphy: Low Barrier Pathways to Quantitative and Reproducible Research in Latin Epigraphy
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3834/paper4.pdf
|volume=Vol-3834
|authors=Petra Heřmánková,Brian Ballsun-Stanton,Ray Laurence
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/chr/HermankovaBL24
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==FAIR Turn in Epigraphy: Low Barrier Pathways to Quantitative and Reproducible Research in Latin Epigraphy==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3834/paper4.pdf
FAIR Turn in Epigraphy: Low Barrier Pathways to
Quantitative and Reproducible Research in Latin
Epigraphy
Petra Heřmánková1,∗,† , Brian Ballsun-Stanton2,† and Ray Laurence3,†
1
Department of History and Classical Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark
2
Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University, Australia
3
Department of History and Archaeology, Macquarie University, Australia
Abstract
The application of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles can revolutionise the
epigraphic discipline by facilitating quantitative and reproducible research. Despite the richness of Latin
inscriptions, the lack of low-barrier tools for accessing and analysing these datasets has hindered large-
scale studies and the uptake of FAIR and Open Science principles in ancient studies. The LatEpig v2.0
tool addresses this gap by enabling researchers to programmatically access the Epigraphic Database
Clauss-Slaby, and generate reproducible research following state-of-the-art standards. The main aim
of LatEpig is to democratise data access and enhance research potential without requiring advanced
technical skills. A case study on ‘viator’ inscriptions exemplifies the tool’s utility, illustrating spatial
and temporal trends in inscriptions addressing messengers and travellers across the Roman Empire.
LatEpig exemplifies that the development of similar tools is crucial for advancing FAIR and Open Science
practices in the Humanities, ensuring that substantial investments in digital resources are fully realised.
Keywords
Roman Empire, Latin inscriptions, quantitative epigraphy, research software development, ancient his-
tory
1. Introduction
Over the past 40 years, the digitisation and development of the Epigraphic Database Clauss-
Slaby (EDCS), has made 539,766 Latin inscriptions accessible online.1 EDCS represents one
of the richest resources to study the development of the Roman Empire (27 BCE - 476 CE in
the West / 1453 CE in the East) and its inhabitants. Inscriptions - short messages written on
durable materials, range from funerary markers and epitaphs, dedications, public decrees and
CHR 2024: Computational Humanities Research Conference, December 4–6, 2024, Aarhus, Denmark
∗
Corresponding author.
†
Author contributions: Conceptualization: author 1,2,3; Data Curation: 1,2; Formal analysis: 1; Funding Acquisi-
tion: None; Investigation: 1; Methodology: 1,2; Project Administration: 1; Resources: 1,2; Software: 1, 2; Supervi-
sion: 3; Validation: 1; Visualization: 1; Writing – Original Draft Preparation: 1,2,3; Writing – Review & Editing:
1
£ petra.hermankova@cas.au.dk (P. Heřmánková); brian.ballsun-stanton@mq.edu.au (B. Ballsun-Stanton);
ray.laurence@mq.edu.au (R. Laurence)
ȉ 0000-0002-6349-0540 (P. Heřmánková); 0000-0003-4932-7912 (B. Ballsun-Stanton); 0000-0002-8229-1053
(R. Laurence)
© 2024 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
1
Accessed 15 June 2024.
649
CEUR
ceur-ws.org
Workshop ISSN 1613-0073
Proceedings
accounts, milestones and boundary markers, to curse tablets and magic formulae [8]. They offer
insights into broad phenomena, such as migration and mobility [38, 25], diffusion of religious
beliefs [11], economic performance and specialisation [40, 21], commemoration practices [3, 4,
28] but also linguistic variation and social change [26, 34], covering the Mediterranean over
several centuries[16].
Despite being an invaluable resource for Latin epigraphy, EDCS has significant issues that
hinder its full potential for quantitative studies [16]. Problems such as unclear attribution of
individual text editions and uncertain authorship of editorial changes limit the impact of the
extensive effort and investment in developing this rich resource [9, 31, 5]. The data in EDCS
is findable and accessible for viewing via a simple web interface, which allows searches
based on various criteria, such as free text within inscriptions, metadata like date or origin,
and preselected keywords related to socio-political status or typology of inscriptions. However,
the search results are displayed as ephemeral HTML outputs without options to download or
save parameters, making reuse and replication impossible. Moreover, hidden in the plain sight
of the search output, important information, like geographical coordinates and links to other
databases, is difÏcult to access and can be achieved through a series of clicks. Manual data
extraction is tedious and error-prone, further contributing to the lack of interoperability and
overall unFAIRness of EDCS [16].
In an attempt to solve the known limitations of EDCS, we came up with a low-threshold
solution that allows researchers or students of ancient history to access and utilise the EDCS in
a reproducible manner and enables large-scale longitudinal studies of Latin epigraphy, while
adhering to the standards of FAIR and Open Science [39]. While developing an application
programming interface (API) would solve the issue for programmers and more advanced users,
the majority of researchers and students in ancient history and related fields do not have the
necessary skill set or resources to hire IT personnel to query an API. This was demonstrated by
the case of LatEpig version 1.0, which was a simple command-line tool, that however proved to
be too complex for the target audience. Thus, we decided to create a tool that allows for novice-
user-friendly access to the data, while adhering to the highest standards of Open Science.
The value of LatEpig as a research tool is evident in the numerous projects that have utilised
it since its release in 2021 [2]. Researchers have used LatEpig to access and process all EDCS
inscriptions, enriching them for quantitative studies [13, 14, 16]. Machine-learning classifica-
tion of inscription types, as conducted by [20], expanded the dataset into Latin Inscriptions in
Space and Time (LIST, [22]) and Latin Inscriptions of the Roman Empire (LIRE, [23]). These au-
thors also addressed biases and temporal uncertainty in epigraphic datasets [16]. Other studies
leveraged the expanded LIST and LIRE datasets to explore topics such as the popularity of the
healing deity Asclepius during the Antonine Plague [11] and the economic specialisation in the
Roman Empire [21]. The Minerva project developed Itiner-e: The Gazetteer of Ancient Roads,
using milestones to trace Roman roads [7]. Additionally, LatEpig was employed to train neural
networks for reconstructing missing text within inscriptions, opening new avenues for large
language models in epigraphy [30].
As a practical example of LatEpig’s contribution to the current research agendas, we present
a case study of ’viator’ inscriptions - texts placed along Roman roads addressing passers-by,
documenting not only the mobility of people but also suggesting the relatively widespread lit-
eracy levels. While ’viator’ inscriptions are a well-known phenomenon, their exact extent and
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historical development remain unexplored. We will demonstrate how LatEpig can contribute
to the broader understanding of this phenomenon while adhering to FAIR and Open Science
principles. We publish all steps in the case study R script along with detailed comments and
provide interested scholars and students with a step-by-step script, guiding them through a
simple analysis of several hundred inscriptions.
2. How to FAIRify Latin inscription in a few clicks
The LatEpig’s main purpose is to alleviate some of the technological and methodological inef-
ficiencies of EDCS and enable reproducible and quantitative research of Latin inscriptions to
anyone, without requiring any special programming skills. The novice user can run LatEpig
with a single click in a myBinder Jupyter Notebook web interface, with instructions directly
available in the Notebook with examples of possible searches. Once users are happy with the
parameters and results of their search, they can download them as JSON or TSV files to their
computer, with the search metadata written directly to the file name for ease of replication
and verification. The downloaded file contains 22 attributes, such as the text of the inscription,
dating, place name, latitude and longitude etc. As an addition to EDCS, cleaned text of the in-
scription is available in three different formats, suitable for distant reading methods and NLP.
For details, see the LatEpig output metadata description.
Users wishing to explore the spatial aspect of the results can display the search output on
an interactive map (Figures 1 and 2), allowing visual inspection of the results along with the
system of Roman Provinces and road network. Alternatively, upon zooming in the map they
can open a detailed record of individual inscriptions, dynamically populated from the selected
search output.
Some users might be interested in publishing the search results on a map without having
to export data to a separate GIS software while maintaining the principles of FAIR and Open
Science. For this purpose, LatEpig contains a separate (experimental) interface, that allows
publishing LatEpig search results as a high-quality map with customisable parameters (BW or
colour, DPI values, output file type, add/remove open historical geospatial layers). For bet-
ter reproducibility and transparency of the research output, the search parameters and other
metadata (source, tool used, date, number of results, map parameters) along with their licenses
and credits, are printed on the map and to the filename, see Figure 3. When creating a map
with the results of the custom search, users can select layers to include in the map, such as the
boundaries and provinces of the Roman Empire at different points in time [17], Roman roads
[32], and ancient cities [12].
3. Case study: the ‘viator’ inscriptions
The ‘viator’ inscriptions are part of the broader phenomenon of ‘speaking stones’, inanimate
objects that address anonymous passers-by. These epitaphs invite people to read, reflect and
commiserate the fate of the deceased [1] Found in both Latin and Greek during the first four
centuries CE, when the Mediterranean region was under Roman control, see Figure 3, they
are often cited as evidence of high literacy, as random travellers were expected to read them
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Figure 1: LatEpig Interactive map of Roman Empire displaying the result of the search ‘viator’, N=697
inscriptions.
while pausing their travels. Typically located on funerary inscriptions along roads leading to
settlements [27], ‘viator’ inscriptions are considered widespread, yet there is a significant lack
of quantitative studies offering a comprehensive view of their distribution and extent of the
phenomenon.
According to Lewis and Short’s classical dictionary, the noun viator, oris, m. has two
meanings: broadly, a ‘wayfarer’ or ‘traveller’, and more narrowly, an ‘apparitor’, an ofÏcer who
summoned people before the magistrate [29]. The Oxford Latin Dictionary also defines ‘viator’
as either a traveller or, in the epigraphic context, the addressee of roadside inscriptions, as well
as an ofÏcial messenger employed by Roman magistrates, colleges, or public bodies[10].
3.1. Results
We extracted the occurrences of the term ‘viator’ in Latin texts from EDCS using the LatEpig
tool, which resulted in 697 hits, see raw data on GitHub. Out of the 697 inscriptions containing
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Figure 2: LatEpig Interactive map with a detailed overview of the inscription EDCS-28500185 dated
between 271 and 330 CE from Pliska in Moesia Inferior (modern-day Bulgaria). The text of the inscrip-
tions invokes the passer-by to stop and read (reste viator et lege) about the life of Varius Sudicintis, a
soldier who died at age 40, and his dear mother who Susa commissioned the inscription. Other online
sources, however, provide a variant reading: instead of Varius Sudicintis, the deceased was named Var-
sudicintis, see https://edh.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/edh/inschrift/HD042071.
the search term viator, the largest group consists of epitaphs (tituli sepulcrales), representing
46.7%, followed by inscriptions of unknown type at 16%, religious inscriptions (tituli sacri) at
11.5%, and building inscriptions (tituli operum) at 11.4%. The interpretively refined version of
the text identified 347 instances of the personal name Viator with a capitalised ’V’ and 350
instances of the noun viator in lowercase.
Upon closer inspection, many of these were instances of the personal name ‘Viator’, rather
than the noun ‘viator’. Focusing on the 350 instances of the noun ‘viator’, 51.2 % are epitaphs,
17 % unknown type, 15.9 % building inscriptions, and 7.5 % are religious inscriptions. Through
a combination of distant and close reading of the 226 epitaphs, we have identified the following
patterns:
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Figure 3: Publication-ready map displaying the result of the search ‘viator’, N=697, with roads and
cities, the borders of the Roman Empire in AD 117. The search parameters are automatically printed
on the map, along with the data sources used for the map.
1. The noun viator, meaning ’passer-by’ or ’unknown traveller,’ is frequently used in exhor-
tations to pause and reflect on the deceased. Common verbs in the imperative include
reste (stop, pause), siste (stop), consiste (stop, stand still), ave (hail, farewell), vale (farewell,
be well), scire (know), cognosce (learn), as well as the first-person singular rogo te (I ask
you), or the plural imperative avete vos viatores (farewell, travellers). This usage accounts
for 72.6% of the viator occurrences in the 226 epitaphs.
2. The noun viator also appears in the context of an attendant to a low-ranking Roman
ofÏcial, often mentioned as part of the cursus honorum (list of achievements) of the indi-
vidual in the inscription. Examples include viator tribunicius, viator consulum/consularis,
viator quaestorius, viatori apparitori, viatores collegii, and decurialis viatoris. This group
represents 24.8% of the viator occurrences in the 226 epitaphs.
3. In 2.6% of the viator occurrences, the meaning remains uncertain due to fragmentary
preservation of the text.
For the temporal distribution of the three contextual groups, dating intervals were available
for 174 inscriptions. To address temporal uncertainty in the epigraphic data, we applied Monte
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Figure 4: Temporal distribution of dated epitaphs mentioning the noun ‘viator’ by its context, N=174.
We can see two distinct temporal patterns: the popularity of the attendant to Roman officials (in orange)
on inscriptions precedes the one referring to travellers (in blue). The trends represent a result of a Monte
Carlo simulation applied to mitigate for relatively high-level of temporal uncertainty of inscriptions.
The data’s confidence interval visually represents the uncertainty level for a given point in time (in
grey).
Carlo modelling methods [24], generating 1000 dataset variants based on the widest dating
intervals and plotting them with confidence intervals (shown in grey). Figure 4 reveals distinct
trends: inscriptions mentioning attendants to low-ranking ofÏcers peaked during the Julio-
Claudian dynasty (1st-2nd centuries CE), declining after 200 CE and disappearing by 400 CE.
Inscriptions addressing travellers were most frequent from the late 2nd century CE until 300
CE, after which their numbers declined but persisted in small numbers until 600 CE.
To explore spatial trends, we plotted the contextual groups on a map of the Roman Empire
across eight historical periods using Monte Carlo methods. The results in Fig 5 show two
distinct trends: The results show two distinct trends: a) inscriptions referring to low-ranking
ofÏcials are concentrated around Rome throughout all periods, and b) inscriptions addressing
passers-by are more geographically dispersed, appearing in both the West and East. Due to its
population density and road networks, they cluster in Italy, and also in Moesia Inferior along
the northeastern border. A similar trend addressing travellers was also observed in bilingual
and Greek inscriptions, using phrases like χαῖρε παροδεῖτα (i.e. EDCS-27800442 from the 4th
century CE Constanta / Tomi in modern-day Romania).
The rise of ‘viators’ as the attendants to Roman ofÏcials coincided with the growth of the
state apparatus during the Julio-Claudian period, particularly under Emperor Augustus (27 BCE
- 14 CE). This era saw an increase in epigraphic production in general and tendencies to elevate
one’s social status [6, 35]. The decline after 200 CE might be explained by a shift in societal
values, leading to the prestige deterioration of state servants, or by an unknown regulation,
that limited the practice.
The occurrence of ‘viators’ as travellers aligns with the development of the Roman road net-
work and the overall patterns of epigraphic production [16], peaking in the late second century
655
CE and declining by the third. However, they remained common until 300 CE, particularly in
Moesia Inferior and Superior, where nearly half were linked to soldiers or veterans. Nearly
half of the inscriptions from Moesia Inferior (18 out of 38) were dedicated by/to a soldier or a
veteran, indicating the strong influence of the Roman military on the epigraphic production
along the northeastern border of the Empire. Future research should analyse Greek inscrip-
tions to better understand why ‘viator’ inscriptions were especially popular among soldiers in
Moesia compared to other border provinces.
The 697 instances of the term ‘viator’ in EDCS challenge the notion of widespread diffusion
of these inscriptions. While EDCS does not include every Latin inscription, its broad and con-
sistent spatial coverage makes it unlikely that many ‘viator’ inscriptions are missing. Based on
the data extracted from EDCS, LatEpig, we have learnt that the phenomenon is less common
than portrayed in reference books and publications, which often highlight specific examples
rather than providing a comprehensive overview. Using LatEpig, we were able to perform the
analysis in a substantially shorter time and in a fully reproducible manner, providing the data
and scripts for reevaluation.
4. Discussion
Most epigraphic databases were designed well before the FAIR and Open Science movement
was formulated and introduced to the Humanities. In cases, where their original data struc-
ture and its implementation are not up to par with FAIR principles, the development of tools
enabling low-threshold access and reuse plays a key role. The LatEpig successfully fills the
gap between the data and the needs of the researchers, wishing to explore new dimensions,
equipped with research questions that go beyond a single data point, or even beyond 10,000 of
them. It needs to be reiterated that LatEpig does not intend to create new data, but to democra-
tise the existing ones by providing easier access and introducing scale and transparency to
epigraphic research while giving full credit to the EDCS creators. We do not claim to fix all
known issues with the contents of the EDCS, such as unclear attribution of text editions or
authorship of the records. Instead, we focus on ensuring the output is stable and transparent,
which leads to higher reproducibility of epigraphic research. What once started as a side-fun-
job, has grown into a mature tool with several success stories, precisely because of the demand
from the community, riding on the waves of FAIRification.
We would, of course, prefer there to be no need for a ‘scraper’ in the first place. Tools that
rely on parsing the HTML output of a website are notoriously fragile, and our scraper had to
be modified several times to reflect upstream changes by the database maintainers [33]. On
the other hand, the democratic accessibility of this tool does not require the database authors
to apply for more funding or to engage in a development effort they may not have time or
attention for, such as an API. These ad hoc tools also form part of the academic’s toolkit, even
if they are fragile by nature. A secondary benefit of our scraper is the ability to preserve the
database in TSV and JSON files in case of sudden loss of original data and disappearance of
the site. Still, tools like ours form an intermediate phase between early-web projects and those
built on the standards of a FAIR and open scholastic and semantic web [18].
The FAIR turn in epigraphy is a relatively recent phenomenon, yet much needed [15, 5].
656
A substantial investment was made in creating digital resources, and yet, the reuse of digital
datasets in the Humanities lags [37, 19, 36]. Building low-barrier tools such as LatEpig may
help alleviate the disconnect between data creators and data users until there is a better uptake
and internalisation of the FAIR principles by the data creators in the research community.
Acknowledgments
EDCS is created by Prof. Manfred Clauss, Anne Kolb, Wolfgang A. Slaby, Barbara Woitas, and
hosted by the Universitat Zurich and Katolische Universitat Eichstat-Ingoldstadt. LatEpig was
built with the permission of Manfred Clauss.
The original free-time project started in 2017 when the authors were employed at the same
university and continued evolving into the current form, despite the long distance since 2019.
The writing of this manuscript was made possible thanks to the support of the Past Social
Networks Project, financed by The Carlsberg Foundation’s Young Researcher Fellowship (CF21-
0382).
A. Online Resources
The one-click LatEpig tool is available via MyBinder online service. LatEpig sourcecode is
available on PyPi, GitHub and Zenodo.
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Figure 5: Spatial distribution of epitaphs mentioning the noun ‘viator’ by its context. The dots rep-
resent findspots of inscriptions, placed within the borders of the Roman Empire in 117 CE. The dated
inscriptions (N=174) are modelled using the Monte Carlo simulation, which creates a random date
within their dating interval and then groups them in one of the eight historical periods, shown as indi-
vidual maps.
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