Discoveries at Plataia in 1889 9781463220082

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Discoveries at Plataia in 1889

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A n a l e c t a Gorgiana

266 Series Editor George Kiraz

Analecta Gorgiana is a collection of long essays and

short

monographs which are consistently cited by modern scholars but previously difficult to find because of their original appearance in obscure publications. Carefully selected by a team of scholars based on their relevance to modern scholarship, these essays can now be fully utili2ed by scholars and proudly owned by libraries.

Discoveries at Plataia in 1889

By J. C. Rolfe F. B. Tarbell Charles Waldstein W. Irving Hunt

i gorgia* press 2009

Gorgias Press LLC, 180 Centennial Ave., Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2009 by Gorgias Press LLC Originally published in All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2009

1

ISBN 978-1-60724-495-0

ISSN 1935-6854

Extract from The A-merican Journal of A^rchaeology, vols. 5 & 6 (1889,1889).

Printed in the LTnited States of America

PAPERS OF THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL STUDIES AT ATHENS. DISCOVERIES AT PLATAIA IN 1889.

I. A NEW F R A G M E N T OF T H E P R E A M B L E T O DIOCLET I A N ' S EDICT, " D E P R E T I I S R E R U M VENALIUM."

The preamble to Diocletian's Edict De Pretiis Rerum Venalium has been known hitherto from two copies, one (4) found in Egypt and brought in 1807 to Aix in Provence, where it is now preserved in the museum, the other ($) still in situ, inscribed on the wall of a Roman edifice in Stratonike in Karia. The latest and best editions of these two inscriptions are given by Waddington in Le Bas, Voyage Archéologique, vol. in, pp. 145 if., and by Mommsen in the Corpus Inseriptionum Latinamm, vol. ill 2 , pp. 801 if. In the course of the excavations carried on at Plataia in April 1889, by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, under the direction of Dr. Waldstein, there was found, in the most western of the ruined Byzantine churches situated within the walls of the northern half of the city, a marble stele, bearing an inscription which proved to be a fragment of this preamble. The stone formed part of the pavement of the church, the inscribed face being uppermost, and the upper end, including part of the inscription, being imbedded in the wall. The back is rough. There are traces of an original moulding on the sides and front, but this has been hacked away, with the result of totally obliterating the first line of the inscription. On the righthand side about half of the letters have been worn away, as if by the tread of feet. As this is true of the part imbedded in the wall, the stone must' have been used, but in a different position, in the pavement of an earlier building. When found, it was broken irregularly across the middle. It has since been conveyed to Athens, and is now in the National Museum. In the course of transportation two small 428

DIOCLETIAN'S

EDICT, " DE PBETIIS RERUM VENALIUM."

429

pieces were chipped off and lost, one containing the last twelve letters of line 34, as given in our text below, the last eleven of 35, and the last three of 36 ; the other containing the first letter of 49, the first two of 50, the first two of 51, and the first three of 52. Mr. Rolfe's copy and squeeze were made at Plataia; Mr. Tarbell's, at Athens. Length of stele, 1.35 met.; width at bottom, 0.835 m., at top, 0.80 m.; thickness, 0.18 m . ; height of letters, 0.006-0.013 m. Specimen letters ; rare forms in ( ) : c

A (A), bi,c,)> d(Ah), €. 19; h . I (1 tm«!), Iv .m ,N N ,o, ?,

\. R .YT/r;u|>rte>- % x

With the help of the two copies of this text previously known (A and S), the original contents of our stone can be restored. Letters between parentheses, ( ), are those which appear on this stone, but not on i or S; those in italics and not between brackets, [ ], are either lacking in our text and supplied from A or S, or substituted from A or S for the reading of our text; letters between brackets, [ ], are conjectural restorations, i. ., do not appear on any of the three stones. I n the latter no great confidence can be felt; in no case where a gap in A and S has been filled by the Plataian copy has the conjecture of a previous editor been exactly verified. I n numbering the lines, the original first line has been counted. The sign § is used to indicate uncut spaces. Three of these (those in lines 12, -28, 44) are in the legible portions of the inscription, and all correspond with similar vacant spaces in A. We have therefore assumed that, if our inscription were complete, the correspondence would hold throughout, and have inserted, on the testimony of A, the sign § in lines 18 and 24. We have inserted it also at the beginning of lines 40 and 52, where A fails us, because the number of letters in the preceding lines is insufficient to fill the space. I t will be seen that we thus get a § at the beginning of every sentence, except in line 6, where there is no evidence for one (though one is not impossible, the size and distribution of letters being irregular), and in line 35. Nothing was inscribed below line 55, and the remainder of the preamble must therefore have been on a second stele.

430

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