After 3 long months of brainstorming, reading, and deliberation, I've finally settled on a thesis topic. Demographics of early Christians at Rome. My adviser introduced me to a great new resource last month: Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae (ICUR). It's this huge collection of inscriptions found in the Christian catacombs at Rome. It's a bit tedious translating all of them since they're all in Latin, but they're so interesting to read, especially the ones with little tributes written by their spouses, or by parents to their children. It has also been interesting to note that Christians seemed to die fairly young (in their 20s) undoubtedly because of persecution.
It's going to require a lot of tedious work, but no one has ever done this before so at least my research will be a contribution to classics and antiquity, however small it may be.
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