On Weights and Measures

On Weights and Measures is a historical, lexical, metrological, and geographical treatise compiled in 392 AD in Constantia by Epiphanius of Salamis (c. 315–403). The greater part of the work is devoted to a discussion on Greek and Roman weights and measures.

The composition was written at the request of a Persian priest, sent to Epiphanius by letter from the Roman emperor in Constantinople.^[1] Although five fragments of an early Greek version are known to exist, with one entitled Περὶ μέτρων καὶ στάθμων (On Weights and Measures), added by a later hand,^[2] this Syriac version is the only complete copy that has survived. Partial translations in Armenian and Georgian^[3] are also known to exist. Its modern title belies its content, as the work also contains important historical anecdotes about people and places not written about elsewhere.

Two manuscripts of On Weights and Measures, written in Syriac on parchment, are preserved at the British Museum in London. The older (Or. Add. 17148) was found in Egypt and, according to the colophon, was written in the Seleucid era, in "nine-hundred and sixty-[...]" (with the last digit effaced, meaning, that it was written between the years 649 AD–659 AD). The younger manuscript is designated "Or. Add. 14620".^[4]

The first to attempt a modern publication of Epiphanius' work was Paul de Lagarde in 1880, who reconstructed the original Syriac text by exchanging it with Hebrew characters,^[5] and who had earlier published excerpts from several of the Greek fragments treating on weights and measures in his Symmicta.^[6] In 1973, a critical edition of the Greek text was published by E.D. Moutsoulas in Theologia.^[7]