Olfactoric sensations related to acts of reading are by no means exclusively caused by literary texts, however, and the Latin verse inscriptions offer several remarkable perspectives on the ancient landscape of fragrance (or ‘smellscape’, as some have put it), as the following choice of texts will show.
Already, on another occasion, I have introduced the famous epitaph inscribed on the monument of the Flavii at Cillium/Kasserine (Tunisia), where a passage of the inscribed poems – poems that comprise a grand total of 110 lines! – reads as follows: (CIL VIII 212=11300b = CLE 1552a and CIL VIII 213=11300c = CLE 1552b):
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