The Epigraphic Habit. Inscriptions, chiseled in stone, were a highly visible and durable means of conveying information to the general public. The process of writing in stone or bronze, or on any other hard and permanent medium, was a well-advanced science in Rome; more than three hundred thousand inscriptions survive today, a fraction of what originally existed, and the study of them is called epigraphy. They range in length from one or two words to long passages that would fill many pages of modern publications; one of the longest, a philosophical text of Diogenes of Oenoanda, was carved on stone tablets that stretched for eighty-seven yards. So prevalent was the practice, and so formulaic was its aspect, that the Romans have been said to function according to an epigraphic habit that outpaced earlier civilizations, including the Greeks, particularly during the turn of...