Les langues de l’épigramme épigraphique grecque : regard sur l’identité culturelle chrétienne dans l’Antiquité tardive

This paper deals with the rich production of Greek verse inscriptions of Late Antiquity, a large, multi-layered production, which has been usually studied for its historical value. The literary aspects of late epigrams are not often considered by epigraphists, who merely emphasize the presence of “Homeric” expressions and syntagms. In order to show the interest and the results of a literary analysis of late epigraphic epigrams, a sample of Christian inscriptions in verse, of the fifth and sixth centuries, from Crete, Asia Minor, Egypt is taken into consideration. The study of the language and the literary models reveals how these inscriptions, far from being a dull repetition of the so-called “Homeric model” are often inspired by contemporary poetic language, especially by that of Christian poetry. Greek Christian inscriptions in verse show a conscious, and ideological, re-use of Christian poets of the fourth and fifth centuries, in particular of Gregory of Nazianzen and Nonnus of Panopolis, together with / instead of the classical models. These epigrams should therefore be considered at the light of the general problem of the Christianization of the classical language. Their authors and their patrons tried to adapt the classical paideia to a language felt as “lawful” and more representative from an ideological and religious point of view.