The Edict of Diocletian is perhaps the most useful of all the inscriptions that survive from the ancient world. Issued in AD 301 in an attempt to curb rampant inflation, it listed the maximum legal price for c. 1400 goods and services that could be bought and sold in the Roman empire at that date, preserving for scholars a rare window into everyday life. The Edict survives in more than forty fragmentary copies, all from the eastern empire, some entirely in Latin and others with the price list in Greek after a Latin preamble.
The most complete copy is the Latin one from Aphrodisias published here, which preserves c. 40% of the Edict. It was inscribed on the north face of the Civil Basilica, along with a roughly contemporary Latin inscription called the Currency Dossier, also published in this volume.
The standard edition of the Edict, that of Lauffer, combines the Aphrodisias material with that from other sites to produce a bilingual composite text, Latin and Greek on facing pages.[1] The volume reviewed here does not supersede that edition; indeed it describes itself as ‘a supplement to the Lauffer edition’ (p. ix). But the supplement provided is very significant, so this work will be essential for anyone interested in the Edict (or in the archaeology of Aphrodisias; being part of the official publication of the New York University excavations of Aphrodisias, this work includes far more information on the physical context of the inscriptions than does Lauffer).
The bulk of the book (pp. 31-126) consists of an edition of the Latin Edict, that is the Aphrodisias inscription supplemented as needed by portions discovered at other sites and, where the Latin version is entirely lost, by Latin translations of any surviving Greek versions. This edition has one tremendous advantage over Lauffer’s: there is a lot more of it. Significant fragments of the Edict have been unearthed since Lauffer, both at Aphrodisias and elsewhere, making Crawford’s edition more complete even without the portions reconstructed from the Greek. But readers used to Lauffer will miss the apparatus and commentary; Crawford’s text is accompanied only by a very minimal set of notes that seems intended to combine the two functions but leaves many questions unanswered.
Most readers will probably also miss the Greek, and those who do not may suffer in another way. An inattentive reader of this edition might well be tempted to see the Edict as a monolingual text and to take Crawford’s reconstructed Latin as what must have originally appeared at Aphrodisias. That reconstructed text is not in square brackets, which Crawford reserves for purely conjectural emendations; instead it is underlined, while text supplemented from other Latin versions of the Edict is italicised (see examples quoted below). These conventions could easily be misleading to those who do not pay attention to the small print. And the omission of the Greek makes me uneasy also because the relationship between the Edict’s Greek and Latin is more complicated than Crawford admits: although the Greek ought to be simply derivative from the Latin, sometimes the reverse may be the case. For example, at §2.7 Falerini appears for Falerni ‘Falernian wine’, apparently influenced by the Greek Φαλερίνου.
The edition’s conventions are sometimes inconsistent and occasionally misleading. For example, blank areas on the stone are sometimes indicated simply by blank areas in the text, and sometimes by vacat. The latter can appear in small superscript italics (e.g. p. 88) or in regular-sized Roman font that is easily confused with the Latin text (e.g. p. 80 ‘quae praetia in quibus speciebus linorum excedere nemini vacat | licitum est infra [ostenditur]’). Material that Lauffer separates into a distinct column is sometimes merged with the preceding column in this edition (e.g. p. 48, diurni ‘per day’ in §7 on wages); which layout reflects the original?
The sections have been renumbered, so that there are now 70 instead of Lauffer’s 37. This is probably unavoidable since new section headings have turned up on the Aphrodisias fragments, but the renumbering will be inconvenient for readers trying to use this edition along with any earlier work. The inconvenience is partly mitigated by concordances (pp. xiii-xvi, by Benet Salway) showing not only Lauffer’s numeration but also that of seven other editions. These concordances could have been accompanied by more explanation; I was unable to work out exactly what the difference between A and B is, and why some earlier editions appear in both and some only in one.
But a major improvement over Lauffer is the provision of a facing English translation: the Edict is frequently hard to understand, and not only non-specialists but even experts will be grateful to know what Crawford thinks certain passages mean. In saying that a translation is included ‘for the first time in some eighty years’ (p. ix) Crawford refers obliquely to Graser’s translation of 1940,[2] which is good but now very incomplete; he does not mention the 2016 translation by Antony Kropff,[3] which is both more complete than Graser’s and easier to access. Crawford’s translation is in many respects an improvement on both, but non-specialists may find it harder to understand. For example, the table below compares selected entries from §49 Crawford = §19 Lauffer, on clothing:
In some of these entries Crawford’s version is unquestionably an improvement (e.g. 32-33), but in others a non-specialist might find Kropff’s version more comprehensible (how many readers know the word ‘dalmatic’?). Often I am unsure what to make of the differences, and here I feel the lack of a commentary keenly. For example, what does ‘for the indiction’ mean in 1? Indictionalis is a rare word; the TLL defines it ad indictionem vel tributum pertinens ‘pertaining to the indiction or tribute’, which does not really help here. Lauffer in his commentary (p. 262) says ‘steuervorschriftsmäßig’, wie als Naturalabgabe der indictio vorgeschrieben (‘as prescribed by law for use as payment in kind for the indiction tax’). Graser’s and Kropff’s translations probably reflect Lauffer’s interpretation; does Crawford reject it, and if so why? Or is he just trying to translate genuinely obscure Latin with equally obscure English, a translation technique that is not illegitimate, though often frustrating for readers?
On some points the lack of a commentary is partly compensated for by the introduction (pp. 1-12), which discusses not only general questions such as the exact date of the inscriptions and the order of the sections, but also more specific problems such as odd price ratios between particular items. It also sets the Edict in the context of earlier Roman thinking about prices, arguing that its prescriptions represent ‘a radical reversal of earlier Roman practice’ (p. 6). The introduction is useful but for most readers not as useful as it would be if more effort had been devoted to making it clear to non-experts. For example, on p. 9 there is a list of prices of gold in denarii; the first two prices are said to be per pound of gold, the third and fourth can be inferred also to be per pound, the fifth is per a nine solidus piece – when the measurements for the sixth and subsequent prices are not specified, should one assume that they are per pound or per nine solidus piece? (Answer: the former)
The introduction is followed by a chapter by Philip Stinson entitled ‘Reconstruction of the Edicts on the Basilica Façade’ (pp. 13-29). This piece first sets the wall on which the Edicts were inscribed (the north face of the Civil Basilica) into its urban context and then gives a detailed, bay-by-bay analysis of exactly what was where on that wall. This masterful organisation of 275 separate pieces of stone is beautifully clear, aided by many maps and excellent drawings.
After the edition of the Edict comes a chapter on ‘The Aphrodisias Currency Dossier’ (pp. 127-131). This shorter and very fragmentary text, inscribed on the same wall as the longer Edict (probably soon afterwards, according to Crawford), appears only at Aphrodisias and therefore cannot be reconstructed to the same extent as the Edict. It seems to have contained a law for doubling the value (in terms of denarii) of certain coins. An introduction, text, partial translation, and commentary are provided.
Next (pp. 133-170) comes a Turkish translation of the Edict (but not of the Currency Dossier), preceded by what could be a summary of some of the earlier chapters of this work – I do not know enough Turkish to know. This is followed (p. 171) by Appendix 1 on the Edict of Fulvius Asticus, a short edict on prices that appears in Greek after the final section of the Edict of Diocletian as inscribed at Aezani. Crawford offers a Greek text on the basis of earlier publications, followed by his own ‘retro-conversion’ into Latin and an English translation. Appendix 2 (pp. 173-190), by Julia Lenaghan, is a list of extant pieces of the Edict of Diocletian and Currency Edict from Aphrodisias. This is followed by a short bibliography, a list of the sources of illustrations, and an index of Latin words.
The volume closes with a set of photographs. As printed photographs go these are excellent, in some cases even clearly legible. Readers will be grateful. At the same time, not all fragments are included and not all photographs really allow one to distinguish letters. I would have preferred a complete set of drawings; that would allow readers to answer, for example, the question about the layout of §7 raised above, which cannot be answered on from the photographs provided.
The book is well produced, but Greek is mostly transliterated (except in the section on the Edict of Fulvius Asticus); readers who know Greek may find it hard to process.
But overall, despite my quibbles, this is a good, important work that will substantially increase our understanding of the Edict of Diocletian.
Notes
[1] S. Lauffer, Diokletians Preisedikt (Berlin 1971).
[2] E. R. Graser, ‘The Edict of Diocletian on Maximum Prices’, in T. Frank, An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome V: Rome and Italy of the Empire (Baltimore 1940), pp. 305–421.
[3] Available on the author’s Academia.edu site.