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The Borchardt Measure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

W. F. Oakeshott
W. F. Oakeshott
Affiliation:
Lincoln College, Oxford
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Extract

The subject of this note is a bronze measure bought at Sotheby's in 1948. It was catalogued simply as ‘A Byzantine bronze grain measure of cylindrical form, the exterior horizontally grooved and with four lines of inscriptions round the rim, dark patination, with malachite green encrustation, 5¼ in., 7th/8th Century, fitted case’. I bought it partly because the lettering was a rounded uncial somewhat similar to that of a manuscript in which I was then interested; partly because the longish. inscription seemed to offer a possibility of finding out something of the circumstances of its production; partly because it was in itself a pleasant object. After puzzling for some time in moments of leisure over the inscription, I wrote to Professor Bernard Ashmole about it. He pointed out that if I had been using the up-to-date Liddell and Scott—a failure just slightly less unpardonable then than it would be now—I would have found that the measure had already been published. As the articles indicated to which he referred me (AA 1923–24 153–64, in JdI xxxviii–ix) Borchardt, who first brought the measure to notice, was shown it in Alexandria by a dealer who told him that it came from Antioch. There seems, however, to have been doubt in Borchardt's mind as to whether he had understood what the dealer said on this point.

Information

Type
Notes
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 83 , November 1963, pp. 154 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1963

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References

1 The height is 0·132; diameter 0·103 (top), 0·105 (base); thickness of walls 1·5–2 mm. The handle is broken away but the rectangular points of attachment (ca. 0·019 × 0·024) are visible in the photograph. Its capacity is 960 millilitres, or 33·5 fluid ounces.

2 ‘So habe ich den Ortsnamen verstanden.’

3 Mr John Boardman (to whom I am greatly indebted for his help with this note) draws my attention to punctuation points (lines of three or four dots arranged vertically) at the end of l. 2; between the words αλο and ονοματος in l. 3; and between the words δικαιον and ονκιων in l. 4. Also to a correction made by the engraver in l. 4, where ικοσι was first written ινοσι, and τεσαρων written τεεαρων.

4 Dewing, , Procopius (Loeb) ii 121–3Google Scholar translates ‘for this reason, when such bread is distributed, the soldiers generally received as their portion one-fourth more than the usual weight’; and suggests that ἐπαποτέμνεσθαι might be the right reading. But surely the point is that the biscuit being drier, a lesser weight of it than of normal bread represented a given weight of flour? The ‘soldiers' ounce’ took this into account.