Читать книгу A Social and Cultural History of Republican Rome - Группа авторов - Страница 16

Now that we have begun to develop a list of questions that we might ask of our literary sources, it is time to turn to the other major source of information for the Roman Republic: the material evidence. For a number of topics (visual arts and architecture, the city of Rome, the economy) the main source of evidence is not literary but physical. First and foremost, there is information that has been gathered through the practice of archaeology, the systematic uncovering of ancient remains in the earth, including private houses, cemeteries, roads, and large public structures such as temples and grain warehouses. The Roman state and individual Romans also left writings on stone or bronze, from public decrees to private tombstones; epigraphy, which is the analysis of these inscriptions, provides another key source of information. Numismatics, or the study of ancient coins, provides a third key primary source, not just for the economic information that can be derived but from the messages that Romans sent through the design on their coins. Each will be discussed more fully in the section below, to understand the questions we should ask of each source.