Caesarea: before and after the Corpus of Inscriptions (CIIP)

Abstract

This paper briefly asses the information provided by the inscriptions from Caesarea, brought together in the Corpus Inscriptionum. On matters concerning the social history of the city, the various elements of the population and language use they tend to confirm the impression created by the inscriptions from other, comparable cities in the Roman Near East. Latin was present, but far from dominant. It was used for a variety of reasons, by those associated with the provincial government, the army and the city magistrature. There is no evidence that Latin was widely spoken in daily life by the population at large.