Lapidary - Latin Inscriptions

The Lapidary - Latin Inscriptions app was developed by Dave Schwind (me), a historian frustrated by my inability to read early Latin inscriptions and manuscripts. AI-based chatbot programs that can read Latin exist, but there is no quality control. They can sound confident, but provide incorrect translations and, even worse, make up information.

I personally developed Lapidary to quickly read Latin from photographs, including stone inscriptions, medieval manuscripts, coins, and printed sources, and return a faithful transcription, a natural English translation, expanded abbreviations, and historical context for the people and places named.

Lapidary is built for people who want to understand what they are looking at: travelers standing in front of a church memorial, authors reading primary source documents, historians, genealogists working through parish records, auction houses, collectors, and academics who need a fast, first reading. Scholarship remains with the user; all AI-generated translations should be double-checked for accuracy.

WHAT MAKES LAPIDARY DIFFERENT

A generic translation app will confidently invent text when writing or an inscription is hard to read. Using independent verification and tailored guidelines, Lapidary will not. When the ink is faded, the stone is worn, or a passage is genuinely illegible, it says so rather than fabricating a plausible-looking reading. This honesty is the whole point: a reading you cannot trust is worse than no reading at all.

Lapidary preserves what is actually on the page. As a religious historian by background, the developer has gone to great lengths to ensure scribal variants and unusual spellings are kept rather than silently "corrected," because those variations can carry real historical, regional, or theological meaning.

TWO READING TIERS

Reader - fast, well-suited to clearer inscriptions, coins, and printed Latin. Costs 1 credit.
Scholar - for dense or difficult paleographic material. Proof testing for Scholar has ranged as far back as early Roman headstones and 5th-century papyrus-based writing. Each Scholar reading is checked by an independent verification pass and is structured to align with TEI scholarly standards, so a reading can be exported as a citable, transferable artifact rather than a screenshot. Costs 4 credits.

WHAT YOU GET WITH EACH READING

• A diplomatic transcription of the text as written
• A natural English translation
• Expanded abbreviations
• Identification and context for persons, places, and dates named
• Honest signaling of anything that could not be read
• PDF and TEI export (XML) for Scholar readings

YOUR READING HISTORY

Every reading is saved privately to your account. The readings can be tagged and organized into collections. You can add location notes to remember where you found an inscription. Your readings are visible only to you.

CREDITS & SUBSCRIPTION

New accounts include free credits to try both tiers. A subscription is $9.99 per month and includes 40 credits. Unused credits do not expire. You can also buy top-up credit packs at any time. A Reader reading costs 1 credit; a Scholar reading costs 4. Subscriptions are managed in your Apple ID settings and renew automatically until cancelled.

PRIVACY

Lapidary uses Sign in with Apple, so there is no separate password. Your readings belong to you. You can permanently delete your account and all associated data at any time from within the app.

FEEDBACK

The ability for AI to read ancient languages is developing at a rapid pace. Because of the constant rate of change, I am continually improving the back-end mechanics to deliver the best possible translation. There's a rating system in each reading to provide feedback. Please use it. Your feedback will directly improve this app for everyone.

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