Reading inscriptions

Reading inscriptions is a practical skill: the Latin on tombstones, arches, coins, and public monuments is real Latin, but written in a compressed, stone-cutter's style. Once you know the conventions, a wall of capitals becomes readable. This is some of the most rewarding Latin a beginner can meet, because it is everywhere from museums to old buildings.

Three things to expect:

• All capitals, no lower case. Roman inscriptions are carved in capitals only, and often with no spaces or with a raised dot between words.
• V for U (and I for J). The Romans had no separate letter U; IVLIVS is Iulius (Julius), and AVGVSTVS is Augustus.
• Heavy abbreviation. Common words are cut to a letter or two.

A short table of abbreviations you will meet again and again:

Abbreviation	Full Latin	Meaning
D M	Dis Manibus	To the spirits of the dead
S P Q R	Senatus Populusque Romanus	The Senate and People of Rome
COS	consul	consul
F	filius	son (of)
V A	vixit annos	he/she lived ... years

Example: D M IVLIA VIXIT ANNOS XXV reads as Dis Manibus. Iulia vixit annos XXV. = "To the spirits of the dead. Julia lived twenty-five years."

For English speakers: the instinct is to read the capital V as the English consonant "v". On stone it is nearly always the vowel U, so sound out IVLIA as "Iulia", not "Ivlia". And do not give up at an abbreviation: expand the letters, restore the missing vowels, and read the endings just as you would in printed Latin.