The renaissance of IG in this millennium (over twenty volumes published, is it? — I wearied of counting) is a great achievement for which all involved deserve hearty congratulations. The new volume, section I of fascicule III of part III of volume X (yes, a little complicated), treats ‘Callatis et ager Callatianus’ on the north-west coast of the Black Sea. The ager Callatianus contains seven lesser places, the few known scraps of whose histories, as well as that of the city, are duly recorded as fasti.
The typography of the new volume is exquisite, the comprehensive plates are most welcome, the price is inevitably horrendous. Most of these texts had already been published with valuable commentary by the (alas) late editor Alexandru Avram, as vol. III of Inscriptions de Scythie Mineure (Bucharest and Paris, 1999). Some improvements thereto have been made by joins (33 re-unites I. Callatis 42 and 45, so too 34 joins ib. 40 and 41, 67 is transformed vis-à-vis 179); Hӑlmagi and Hallof, who saw the volume through to publication, have also sometimes disagreed with Avram. There are 23 inedita or semi-inedita. Among these, 40, with its evidence for a board of εἰσαγωγεῖς, may interest institutional historians; one villain they brought a charge against was ‘Old Man son of Old Man (Γέρων Γέροντος).
For students of histoire événementielle the volume brings only modest profit (most notable is 6, which bears on the second Syrian war between Ptolemy II and Antiochus II); richer is the evidence for the evidently lively communal life of voluntary religious associations (29–36), and for the cities and regions with which Callatis had commercial relations. The section Fasti Sacri, Documenta Publica adds new fragments to the important but still enigmatic documents presented in I. Callatis as ‘inscriptions oraculaires’. 141 and 143 give new names, respectively Σιμολέων and Γουσα. The speaker of a funerary inscription of the 3rd/4th c. (216) declares ἀνεντόλοι<ς> δὲ πάρειμι, apparently (so Feissel) a Jew regretting his burial among ‘those outside the commandments’.
About the use of Latin for commentary, opinions, we know, are divided; as one who received a very traditional grammatical education I must point out that ‘debuisset accuratius’ in the commentary to 78.2–3, and similarly elsewhere, is wrong for ‘debuit’: see Kühner-Stegmann, Ausführliche Grammatik der lateinischen Sprache, II.1, p. 171. But that is a minuscule defect in a fine volume.