This database of early Christian inscriptions from Rome and its “suburbs,” from the 3rd to the 8th century, is a founding member of EAGLE, the (eventually) comprehensive European Archive of Greek and Latin Epigraphy. Most inscriptions in the project, which is ongoing with 33,162 currently online, were first published in the venerable Inscriptiones Christianes Urbis Romanae, NS vols. I-X. As is customary for digital epigraphy projects, the entry for each inscription includes a bibliography, as well as other helpful, standardized metadata, such as context (if known), material, and iconographic features (also a feature of the Inscriptions of Israel Palestine). This supplementary information will enable strategies of data analysis which are not possible for electronic corpora of literary texts. Somewhat exceptionally, a digital image of the original is included for most entries, which can be difficult for epigraphic databases because of copyright, loss, or destruction; these images are available by an agreement with the Papal Commission of Sacred Archaeology. Finally, revisions of some inscriptions are planned, part of a trend which will eventually make digital (rather than print) publication the standard source for epigraphic data.
