This volume unites scholars of classical epigraphy papyrology and literature to analyze the
documentary habit in the Roman Empire. Texts like inscriptions and letters have gained
importance in classical scholarship but there has been limited analysis of the imaginative and
sociological dimensions of the ancient document. Individual chapters investigate the definition
of the document in ancient thought and how modern understandings of documentation may
(mis)shape scholarly approaches to documentary sources in antiquity. Contributors reexamine
familiar categories of ancient documents through the lenses of perception and function and
reveal where the modern understanding of the document departs from ancient conceptions of
documentation. The boundary between literary genres and documentary genres of writing appears
more fluid than prior scholarship had allowed. Compared to modern audiences inhabitants of the
Roman Empire used a more diverse range of both non-textual and textual forms of documentation
and they did so with a more active questioning attitude. The interdisciplinary approach to the
mentality of documentation in this volume advances beyond standard discussions of form genre
and style to revisit the document through the eyes of Greco-Roman readers and viewers.
