The edition of the Latin copy of Diocletian's Price Edict from Aphrodisias and some related documents by Michael Crawford and his collaborators is a major contribution to the study of the Price Edict itself and to our understanding of the monumental centre of late antique Aphrodisias. Both are topics of prime significance to historians of the Roman Empire in the Greek East. The excavations at Aphrodisias have provided some of the most momentous discoveries of the last sixty years in that field, while the Price Edict remains a key source for the tetrarchic imperial power and its limitations, and on the late antique monetary economy. It was the discoveries at Aphrodisias that added to the hitherto standard edition of Siegfried Lauffer in 1971 the text of the last few chapters of the edict, absent from the earlier editions (chapters 60-70 = 31-37 Lauffer). [1]

Crawford has been working on the Price Edict since the 1970s, first in collaboration with the late Joyce Reynolds and later with Phil Stinson. His work with Reynolds on the Aezani copy remains indispensable and his edition of the Aphrodisias copy has been eagerly awaited. There is perhaps no one alive whose talents would have been better suited to an epigraphic puzzle of this kind and the edition does not disappoint. It is, however, designed to be used in conjunction with other editions of the Price Edict to exact its full value out of it; information to this effect is dispersed (and not always explicitly stated) and a user manual is arguably the most useful function this review can perform.

The core of the volume is a composite edition of the Latin text only, based on the Aphrodisias copy (31-119) and arranged by the bays on the Basilica façade in which it is inscribed. This is the fullest text so far, benefitting not only from Crawford's own painstaking work (56 Aphrodisias fragments are published for the first time and more are allocated to their proper place here), but also from the fragments from Thelpusa in Arcadia, Lemnos and Halicarnassus published since Lauffer's edition. The Aphrodisias text is reproduced faithfully, with errors and phonetic spellings. For the text supplied from other copies, the best version seems to be chosen, and where retro-translated from Greek, Aphrodisian orthography is used in the Latin. Crucially, except in chapter 70, published from the Aphrodisias copy alone, a different system is used instead of the standard Leiden epigraphic conventions(31): square brackets for purely conjectural emendation; italics for the text from other Latin copies (except for 'very minor supplements'); underlining for the text based on the Greek fragments. It is deliberately dependent on Lauffer for the Greek text, apparatus and commentary, and the two editions should now be used side by side; notes at the bottom of the page are meant only to supply new textual or interpretative points. The same dependence on Lauffer is presupposed by the list of parallel texts chapter by chapter (121-126), which is restricted to the 'main witnesses'. Further detail is provided only for the more important fragments (re-)published since 1971. It would also be helpful to provide cross-references to the drawings showing the relative position of fragments at the end of Marta Giacchero's edition. [2] For the Aphrodisias fragments themselves, in place of the apparatus one has to refer to the checklist by Julia Lenaghan at the end (173-190). This provides only the first three lines of each fragment; for their edition as fragments, one still needs to go to Reynolds's edition where available. [3]

The chapter numbering is a new one. It is an improvement on all its predecessors and should become standard for the list of prices, but dropping Lauffer's sections for the preamble is an inconvenient mistake. Instead, we are given the lines of the Aphrodisias copy where it survives (to the beginning of Praef. 14 Lauffer); the rest is split into sections numbered A-E. Oddly, lines of the Aphrodisias text are also given for the translation, though it rightly is not constrained by them. Concordances are supplied by Benet Salway (XIII-XVI); the Crawford-Reynolds edition of the Aezani copy appears twice, presumably in error. The index of Latin words is meticulous, but (unlike Lauffer's index) does not include the preamble. The photographs are of high quality and form an indispensable supplement to volume 2 of Giacchero's edition.

Another feature of the edition is the first full English translation to appear in print since Elsa Graser's in 1940 (there is also a translation published online by Antony Kropff in 2016). [4] It is also accompanied by the first full Turkish translation by Mustafa Somersan, Serra Somersan and Yaşar Demiröz (135-170), which I cannot judge. The English translation is the most complete to-date and will no doubt become standard (Graser's translation ends with chapter 59 of this edition, and misses chapters 24-28 and 37-40; Kropff's comes close to being complete, as does Giacchero's Italian translation, but has its gaps especially in chapter 70; it is also not wholly consistent in the edition it follows). Some readers might find the syntax of Graser's translation of the preamble easier, however (note especially the single sentence translation of lines 21-35). Absence of a commentary does not always allow to follow the reasoning of particular translations (such as 6.86, damascena monaea, unexplained in earlier editions, as 'long-lasting' damsons).

The first introductory chapter (1-12) discusses a number of disparate issues in the study of the Edict, including the introduction of the notion of iustum pretium, the connection between price regulation and currency reform, the arrangement of water transport routes, and the structure of the prices, which is revealed to fit 'a coinage that included units of 25 denarii, the billon nummus, and of 2 denarii' (11). Most importantly, Crawford convincingly argues that the layout of the inscription implies that the Price Edict predated the Currency Dossier, and so was issued in the summer of 301, which requires amending the tribunician date. Oddly, his discussion does not refer to a peculiarity of the Aphrodisias copy, where the year of tribunician power for both Diocletian and Maximian is given as VX (VXII for Maximian in the Currency Edict), in this order of digits, rather than XVIII. (He does not explain why he takes the former to mean '5 times' and not 15.) In fact, it confirms his suggestion: as Reynolds pointed out, the usual date 'rests on the belief that those who used the titles [...] were all very well informed'. [5] Chapter 2, by Stinson (13-29), provides a reconstruction and context of the inscription as a monument and is a masterpiece of its kind. It will be required reading for scholars interested in the epigraphic publication of imperial enactments.

Finally, the volume includes new editions of the Aphrodisias copy of the Currency Edicts (127-131) and of the promulgation edict of Fulvius Asticus from Aezani, with a new Latin retro-version (171). The former, in particular, is a major advance on Reynolds's edition, which it supersedes.

Notes:

[1] S. Lauffer: Diokletians Preisedikt, Berlin 1971.

[2] M. Giacchero: Edictum Diocletiani et collegarum de pretiis rerum venalium, Genova 1974, vol. 2, tab. LXXXIV-XCV.

[3] J.M. Reynolds / Ch. Roueché: Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity. The late Roman and Byzantine inscriptions including texts from the excavations at Aphrodisias conducted by Kenan T. Erim, London 1989, 252-318.

[4] E.R. Graser: "The Edict of Diocletian on Maximum Prices", in: An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, vol. 5, ed. by T. Frank, Baltimore 1940, 305-421; A. Kropff: An English translation of the Edict on Maximum Prices, also known as the Price Edict of Diocletian. (Edictum de pretiis rerum venalium). Published at Academia.edu, April 27, 2016. URL: https://kark.uib.no/antikk/dias/priceedict.pdf [09.06.2026].

[5] J.M. Reynolds / Ch. Roueché: Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity. The late Roman and Byzantine inscriptions including texts from the excavations at Aphrodisias conducted by Kenan T. Erim, London 1989, 268.

Georgy Kantor