Omni Daily Crush: "The Latin Inscriptions of Rome: A Walking Guide"

By Lauren Nemroff

Everywhere you look in Rome there are monuments. And, where there are monuments there are sure to be inscriptions, lots of inscriptions, usually in Latin, and carved into really hard materials like stone.  From the Colosseum and Pantheon to the city's fountains, gates and churches, Rome is covered in inscriptions which make it even more serious and mysterious.  Regrettably, I never learned Latin.  It wasn't offered in my high school, and frankly, I didn't think much of it since it was supposed to be a dead language.  I thought watching the Masterpiece Theatre adaptation of Robert Graves' I, Claudius sufficed.  But, after visiting Rome I realized that I was down right illiterate.  This deficiency resurfaced last year while looking at artifacts at an exhibition on Imperial Rome at the Seattle Art Museum.

Thanks to Tyler Lansford's The Latin Inscriptions of Rome:  A Walking Guide, those of us who are unclassically trained can decode the stories of Rome's myriad monuments and get the story on the people who bankrolled, built, and were commemorated by them.  This book is perfect for travelers who want to do more than scratch the surface (pardon the pun), scholars and students, and just about any curious reader with a strong interest in Roman history, art history, and the ancient world. 

Recommended for readers of Rome and Environs: An Archaeological Guide and Caesar: Life of a Colossus  by Andrew Goldsworthy.

--Lauren