Reading a Roman Inscription Without Knowing Latin

In short: most inscriptions at Ephesus follow the same formula — who paid, who or what it honours, and what was given — so you can get real meaning from just six common abbreviations, with no Latin or Greek required. Look for chiselled-out names too: that erasure is usually the most interesting part.

There is carved writing everywhere at Ephesus — on architraves, statue bases, paving slabs, tomb fronts, the steps of the library — and nearly every visitor walks past all of it, because it looks like a locked door.

It is not. You can get a surprising amount out of an ancient inscription knowing no Latin and no Greek, because these texts are formulaic. They were designed to be scanned by a passing public, and the formulas repeat.

First: which language am I looking at?

Ephesus used both. Greek was the everyday language of the eastern empire; Latin was the language of Roman administration, the army, and formal imperial dedications.

Telling them apart takes a second. Greek uses letters you will recognise as Greek — Σ, Ω, Φ, Θ, Λ, Π. Latin uses the alphabet you already read. Roughly: a monument boasting to Rome will be in Latin; a text speaking to the city will be in Greek. The bilingual ones are usually the interesting ones.

The three things nearly every inscription contains

Who paid. Almost always. This is the whole point of the genre.
Who or what it honours. An emperor, a god, a parent, the city.
What was given. A building, a statue, a restoration, games, a distribution of money or grain.

So a monumental inscription is, structurally, a receipt. Once you know that, the shapes become legible.

The abbreviations worth memorising

Six will carry you a long way in Latin texts:

You see	It means	So
IMP	Imperator	An emperor is involved
CAES / AVG	Caesar / Augustus	Imperial titles — the higher the pile, the grander the claim
COS	Consul	Often followed by a number = which consulship, which dates it
D M	Dis Manibus	"To the spirits of the dead" — you are at a tomb
F / FIL	filius / filia	Son or daughter of — a family chain follows
V S L M	votum solvit libens merito	"Paid a vow gladly and deservedly" — a thank-you to a god

And one Greek convention: a name ending in -ΟΥ is usually possessive — "of so-and-so".

The dating trick

Roman inscriptions often date themselves by counting offices: the tribunician power renewed each year, consulships numbered. If you see a number after COS or TRIB POT, that is a year counter, and specialists date the stone from it with real precision.

You will not do the arithmetic standing there. But knowing that the numbers are a date changes how the text looks, and it explains why archaeologists can say "AD 114" about a fountain with such confidence — as they do for the Fountain of Trajan.

Look for the gaps — they are the best part

The most exciting thing you can find in an inscription is a hole.

When a Roman was condemned after death — damnatio memoriae — their name was physically chiselled out of public texts. At the Temple of Domitian you can see exactly that: a deliberate erasure, cut by a person with a chisel, on a specific day, because the political weather had changed.

Also look for letters that do not match their neighbours — recut text, where a monument was rededicated to a new emperor rather than replaced. It was cheaper to re-carve than to rebuild, and the seams show.

Where to practise on site

The Library of Celsus facade. Long dedicatory texts naming Celsus and his son, in both languages. Also, on the steps, small scratched crosses and menorahs from later centuries — graffiti, not monumental text, and far more moving for it.
Statue bases along Curetes Street. Almost all are dedications. The statues have gone; the receipts remain.
The Gate of Mazaeus and Mithridates. Built by two freed slaves in honour of Augustus and his family — a bilingual text, and a remarkable social document. Two former slaves, wealthy enough to give the city a monumental gate. The full story of the gate.
The Selçuk museum. Where the smaller inscribed stones are, at eye level, with labels. The easiest place to start.

The one that changes how you see the site

Somewhere in Ephesus, on reused blocks, are texts that were carved for one purpose, defaced for another, and built into a wall for a third — a pagan dedication turned into building rubble for a church, then into a mosque. The Isa Bey Mosque in Selçuk is built substantially from the stones of Ephesus, and columns from the Artemision hold up its roof.

Once you start reading stone as a recycled material rather than a fixed monument, the whole region reorganises itself. That is the real reward of learning six abbreviations.