Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum III Noricum

The project aims at a complete collection of all Latin inscriptions of the Roman province of Noricum - that is western Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Salzburg, southern Bavaria, eastern North-Tyrol, East-Tyrol, Carinthia, northern Slovenia and Styria. After completion of this work all Austrian inscriptions - except the few Raetian documents - will be updated. The last volume of CIL III regarding the inscriptions of Noricum was published in 1902. Since then the number of Norican documents found have doubled. The number of inscriptions of Noricum runs up to about 2500. Knowing from experience we expect an estimated number of unreported cases of about 500 objects. 30% of those have already been included in the "old" CIL, another major part of inscriptions were presented in different publications in the last decades. Some however are still unpublished. A complete presentation of all Norican inscriptions has never been made. Following the rules of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum which were set out already by Theodor Mommsen, all original inscriptions will be examined in order to take down the exact reading and to establish all technical facts. The collected material will be sorted according to the Roman civitates Cetium (St. Pölten), Lauriacum (Enns), Ovilava (Wels), Iuvavum (Salzburg), Aguntum (Dölsach), Teurnia (St. Peter im Holz), Virunum (im Zollfeld), Celeia (Celje) and Flavia Solva (Wagna) and published in the CIL. The modern CIL is reformed by giving more detailed presentation of the inscriptions with more technical information, descriptions and particulars to circumstances of finding and where the objects are kept today. There will be a short commentary, photographs and if necessary a reconstruction to each finding. Detailed maps of the region and a historical summary will be provided for a better understanding of the documents and their meanings. There will also be a collection of all information of an inscription in form of a file at the Institute of Ancient History of the University of Vienna which can be used by everybody using inscriptions for their work. Within this project the inscriptions will be provided for the Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg (EDH) by which the documents will be available on the internet.

The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL), founded by Theodor Mommsen, has been since the end of the 19th century the fundamental work for Latin epigraphy. All inscriptions of the whole Roman Empire have been collected therein. The third volume of this corpus, which contains among others the documents of the province Noricum (the region of the Eastern Alps from the Italian border to the Danube and from the Inn-river to the Lower Austrian lowlands and the Burgenland in the East) had been published with its last appendices in 1902. Hence it was necessary to work on a reedition of CIL lll since the amount of inscriptions of this province has more than doubled up now to more than 2700. All monuments not just the ones which appeared already in the last CIL-edition, but also the objects found since 1902 had to be collected.All inscriptions have been visited personally in order to check the reading or to examine them for the first time respectively. The objects also have been measured and photographed. To each inscription the complete literature has been collected including the oldest references since the 15th century (the so called auctores antiquissimi). Each piece is presented with exactest technical data, the place of where it was found and where it is kept today, a short commentary as well as pictures in geographical order by antique territories, wherever possible. A documentary file at the Institute of Ancient History of the University of Vienna has been provided to students and academic fellows working on these inscriptions. It contains all relevant object data, the copied literature, pictures and illustrations.In these inscriptions Roman emperors and governors, legions and other troops, gods and a lot of ordinary citizens left their traces, thus giving a vivid picture of the population and Social Life in this for the largest part Austrian region in Roman times.