Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, standard abbreviation ILS, is a three-volume selection of Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 inscriptions

Epigraphy

Epigraphy Epigraphy Epigraphy (from the , literally "on-writing", is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; that is, the science of identifying the graphemes and of classifying their use as to cultural context and date, elucidating their meaning and assessing what conclusions can be...

 edited by Hermann Dessau

Hermann Dessau

Hermann Dessau was a German ancient historian and epigrapher. He is noted for a key work of textual criticism published in 1889 on the Historia Augusta, which uncovered reasons to believe that this surviving text of ancient Roman imperial history had been written under circumstances very...

. The work was published in five parts serially from 1892 to 1916, with numerous reprints. Supporting material and notes are all written in Latin. Inscriptions are organized within chapters (capita, singular caput) by topic, such as funerary inscriptions, or inscriptions pertaining to collegia

Collegium

A collegium may be:*collegium , a term applied to any association with a legal personality in ancient Rome....

. Each inscription has an identifying number. Scholars citing a Latin inscription will often provide the ILS number in addition to a reference for the more comprehensive Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum

The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum is a comprehensive collection of ancient Latin inscriptions. It forms an authoritative source for documenting the surviving epigraphy of classical antiquity. Public and personal inscriptions throw light on all aspects of Roman life and history...

(CIL); for example, CIL 1².2.774—ILS 39. A concordance

Concordance (publishing)

A concordance is an alphabetical list of the principal words used in a book or body of work, with their immediate contexts. Because of the time and difficulty and expense involved in creating a concordance in the pre-computer era, only works of special importance, such as the Vedas, Bible, Qur'an...

with CIL was published in 1950 (Rome) and 1955 (Berlin).

ILS can also be found cited as Dessau or D.

Sources

• Gordon, Arthur E. Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy. University of California Press, 1983, p. xxi online.
• Wellington, Jean Susorney. Dictionary of Bibliographic Abbreviations Found in the Scholarship of Classical Studies and Related Disciplines. Greenwood, 2003, p. 422 online.

External links

• Dessau, Hermann. Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae. Berlin 1892-1916, 3 vols.

* vol. 1 (1892) [ILS 1 to 2956] – full text downloadable at Internet Archive

* vol. 2, part 1 (1902) [ILS 2957 to 7210] – full text downloadable at Internet Archive

* vol. 2, part 2 (1906) [ILS 7211 to 8883] – full text downloadable at Internet Archive

* vol. 3 (1914/16) [ILS 8884 to 9522 + index] – full text downloadable at Internet Archive

• The searchable, online database Epigraphik-Datenbank Clauss/Slaby includes Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae under the abbreviation D.