A Collège de France - CNED coproduction
Abstract
Epigraphy - or the study of inscriptions - is not simply an auxiliary science that historians call upon for lack of anything better, but one of the living sources of ancient history. While discoveries in this field primarily enrich the history of civil and religious institutions, it would be wrong to think that they do nothing to fill the enormous gaps in political, economic and social history. And nothing would be further from the truth than to imagine that epigraphy has nothing more to contribute when it comes to the great cities of Sparta, Thebes and above all Athens.
