Roman inscriptions have been forged ever since Antiquity. This article mentions some examples from Carnuntum near Vienna, where a considerable number of counterfeit inscriptions were produced on stone, most of them, as it seems, to earn money. In the period of humanism, learned people in Italy and other parts of Europe took a particular interest in inscriptions as important testimonials to the past. Generally, they did not collect original inscriptions on stone, though - a privilege left to emperors and noblemen - but rather news about them, the purpose being to show their peers how many important inscriptions they knew and/or to use them as documentary sources in their own scholarly books and manuscripts. Vienna, the residence of the Holy Roman Emperor, was an important centre of epigraphic research from the fifteenth century onwards. Wolfgang Lazius (1514-1565), an epigraphic scholar who worked in this city, inserted genuine Roman inscriptions in his numerous works, but mixed them up with fake inscriptions of his own as well.