Greek in Sicily after the Roman Conquest

My project investigates the impact of Roman domination on Greek in Sicily through the analysis of the written sources that have come down to us and the application of a sociolinguistic perspective.

The survival of Greek in Sicily under Roman domination and its interaction with Latin have been long debated, but a comprehensive examination of the epigraphic record, taking into account the full array of historical and archaeological evidence and conducted in the light of modern sociolinguistic theory, remains to be attempted.

My research will accomplish this, and in particular it will: assess the use of Greek in different types of text, and its status and function compared to Latin; determine whether differences can be appreciated in the use and survival of Greek in different sites and how these can be put in relation with the socio-historical context; describe the effects of contact between Greek and Latin in the epigraphic sources.

Such an investigation is now possible and timely, as an open access digital corpus of all the inscriptions from Sicily is currently under development (I.Sicily) and the next few years will offer opportunities for productive collaborations.

My project is innovative in being the first study to consider the whole corpus of inscriptions from Sicily and in its interdisciplinary approach, which combines linguistic analysis with investigation of historical and archaeological data within the theoretical frameworks of sociolinguistics.

It will fill a major gap in the scholarship of both Roman Sicily and language contact in antiquity in general, and, through its comprehensive and interdisciplinary perspective, will offer an innovative approach that can be successfully applied to other areas as well.

GISARC is what I need at this stage in order to achieve professional maturity as a researcher, and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice is the ideal host institution where to implement it on account of the expertise and training opportunities that it offers.