How Roman Sumptuary Specialists Named Themselves: A Corpus-Based Study

Abstract

Relying on a corpus of epigraphic materials, this paper focuses on the formulae that were used by urban artisans and merchants specialized in the making and selling of jewels and other goods made of precious metals to call themselves.1 The corpus at hand, which contains around one hundred epigraphic testimonies related to these professionals in the city of Rome (see Appendix II), allows us to identify thirty different nouns or phrases that could refer to them (see Appendix I).