Current Epigraphy

Michael Crawford et al. 2023. Diocletian’s Edict of Maximum Prices at the Civil Basilica in Aphrodisias. Aphrodisias XIII. Reichert Verlag Wiesbaden. Pp. xvi + 208, 35 Pl. ISBN 978-3-752-00685-8. €89.00.

Reviewed by Gabriel Bodard, University of London.

This rich volume contains principally an epigraphic edition, with supporting information from a broad team of collaborators, of the Aphrodisias copy of Diocletian’s “Prices Edict,” probably the longest ancient Latin inscription known to us, at well over a thousand lines of text.  Unlike some of the copies found in other Greek-speaking cities of the eastern Empire, the Aphrodisian inscription is in Latin, in fact one of the very few Latin inscriptions found in this city. Crawford et al.’s goal is not to produce an eclectic edition or reconstructed Ur-text from all copies of the Prices Edict, but to centre this, the most complete extant copy of the text. The edition is aligned to, and in cases supplemented by readings from, other copies, and the editors record differences and inconsistencies between them.

This volume is the culmination of many years’ work at Aphrodisias, with contributions by several experts and specialists within and beyond the research team. The work is informed by and feeds into scholarship in many areas, including epigraphy, architecture, the ancient economy and late antique politics. The contents are impressively inclusive, rigorous and comprehensive. An outline of the component parts follows:

• The editor’s preface by R.R.R. Smith, series editor and director of the Aphrodisias excavations, which briefly summarises the history of scholarship on the Basilica and the Prices Edict.
• The author’s preface by Michael Crawford, which focuses on the reconciliation of and continuing problems with the text of this and other versions of the Prices Edict.
• A concordance of editions, by Benet Salway, UCL historian and epigrapher, which compares, chapter by chapter, the subdivision and numeration of the inscription between editions of Theodor Mommsen and William Waddington in the nineteenth century, E.R. Graser’s and Crawford and Joyce Reynolds’s in the twentieth, and the current edition; essential, as numeration and labelling are key to expressing and understanding a scholar’s interpretation of the Edict.
• An introductory chapter on the Prices Edict by Crawford, which covers in depth the history and dating of the Edict and the inscription, the order and coverage of the Edict, many of its implications and effects, economic analysis of the text, the prices and revaluation of coinage, and some remaining puzzles (some of which have been discussed in epigraphic circles for many years). As an introduction to the edition which follows, this chapter is thorough and informative.
• The second chapter is the “Reconstruction of the Edicts on the Basilica Façade,” by Philip Stinson (archaeologist and museum curator at the University of Kansas). This section summarises excavation history and architectural analysis, and includes wonderfully clear maps, plans and illustrations of the spatial and material context of the Prices Edict. Along with concise and solid discussion of the physical reconstruction of the inscription and its support, this entire chapter is elegantly illustrated and admirably clear; an extremely useful contribution, as well as a pleasure to peruse.
• Chapter 3, which makes up the bulk of the volume at 90 pages, is the text and English translation of the Aphrodisias copy of Diocletian’s Edict on Maximum Prices. The use of epigraphic conventions is carefully explained, in particular the stylistic distinction between texts supplemented from other Latin or Greek fragments of the Edict, and the fact that brackets marking minor emendations, expansions or restorations in such supplements are generally omitted “in order not to burden the text.” The text of the preamble and then the tabular lists of commodities and prices are given in facing Latin and translation.
• Chapter 4 is a list and concordance of fragments of parallel texts of the Prices Edict, sorted by chapter in the current edition.
• Chapter 5 is an edition of two brief and fragmentary Edicts together known as the Aphrodisias Currency Dossier, much reconstructed since its first publication in the 1970s.
• After these chapters appears a long section titled “Özet ve Dıocletıanus’un Tavan Fiyatlar Fermanı,” which is not explained in English but appears to be a translation into Turkish (by Mustafa D. Somersan, Serra Somersan and Yaşar Demiröz) of the editor’s preface and the Latin text of the Edict.
• Appendix I is an edition, reconstructed Latin and translation into English of the Greek copy of the Edict of Fuluius Asticus at Aezani.
• Appendix II, compiled by Julia Lenaghan, sculpture expert for the Aphrodisias excavations, is an epigraphic catalogue of extant pieces of the Prices Edict from Aphrodisias, including dimensions, inventory numbers and bibliographic concordance.
• The end matter of this volume includes bibliography, sources of illustrations, index of Latin words and 35 plates of excellent photographic imagery of the epigraphic fragments and other context from the site of Aphrodisias.

The work of this volume is in most part a new edition of the text, meticulously reconstructed, interpreted and documented by the author and his collaborators. A complete picture of the historical, economic, political and philological interpretation of the Prices Edict and the world of the Diocletianic reforms belongs rather in (several) monographs rather than this comprehensive but purely epigraphic publications. Of course, the act of compiling and editing the text, and even more so of translating it, is an act of thorough interpretation in its own right (as observed by Eleanor Dickey [BMCR review], who tackles some of the differences between Crawford’s and other translations of some sections). Such a project is appropriately brought to completion, as here, by a scholar and a broad team who have spent decades studying this text in particular, and the epigraphy, legislation and economy of the Roman world in general.

Questions inevitably remain, including the “puzzles” listed by Crawford in Chapter 1. There are scholars working on the Prices Edict today, including both ancient (Kropff, Nieva) and modern (Mateskovic/Dujmesic, Hontvari) economists; excavations at Aphrodisias of course continue. New fragments, better readings and ongoing interpretation of the Prices Edict are and will emerge. Although our understanding, and indeed the text, of this inscription will no doubt continue to improve over time, it is hard to imagine any other work superseding this volume as the canonical edition of the Prices Edict of Diocletian for many years.