Finding published inscriptions

The most extensive corpus of Latin inscriptions is the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL). Initiated by Theodor Mommsen in 1853, its first volume was published a decade later, and new parts of the corpus are still being prepared and published over 150 years later. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany in 1989/90, CIL has been enjoying a period of renewed vigour, and has been based since 1994 at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. From the start, it had the ambitious aim of publishing all Latin inscriptions, as an extension of the project initiated in 1815 by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences for publishing all Greek classical inscriptions as Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum. CIL did in fact succeed in publishing the vast majority of Latin inscriptions then known by the time of the outbreak of the First World War, and it now contains about 180000 inscriptions in seventeen volumes, which together are made up of some seventy parts. Latin is the editorial language used throughout. Although the volumes are basically arranged geographically, some gather together inscriptions of a particular type, such as milestones, whilst the first volume has a chronological focus. Within each volume, the inscriptions are arranged topographically, and then by theme and chronology (roughly, religious dedications, followed by imperial inscriptions, honorific texts, epitaphs). Each volume also includes information about the authors of earlier epigraphic publications and manuscripts, crucial for appreciating the ways in which records of inscriptions have been created over time (see further below, Subsection 3.2.5), and a digest of what was known about each region and town at the time of publication. Inscriptions whose authenticity is in doubt (‘falsae’) are included in a separate section, and are marked * (see further below, Subsection 3.3.2); added to them are inscriptions thought not to belong to the site where they have been found (‘alienae’).