Talk:Catacomb of Callixtus

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Language of Inscriptions?[edit]

Is there some way to designate which parts of the inscriptions are in greek and which are in latin? There appear to be inscriptions with have both letters only in Greek as well as the letter C which isn't. Are the Cs actually final lower case sigmas or is that part in Latin?Naraht (talk) 14:41, 27 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The composers and writers of the epigraphs were sometimes sub-literate, so odd uses can be found in the texts. Also, many early Christians in Rome had Greek as a first language and so struggled a bit with Latin. You may find epigraphs using letters from both alphabets, but not often in both languages unless incorporating important religious words and phrases in Greek (the Roman Church kept Greek for its liturgy until the end of the 3rd century). The "C" in Latin actually corresponded originally to the Greek gamma, and the "H" corresponded to eta. Basilwatkinsosb (talk) 11:09, 30 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]