The ambitious project, launched in 1997, to compile a comprehensive corpus of inscriptions written in the many languages of the ‘Iudaea/Palaestina’ moves to its next phase with the publication of this collection of epigraphic documents originating in Caesarea and the Middle Coast region. Nine volumes are planned and this, the second, focuses on Caesarea and its hinterland (Chapter 2). Briefer sections cover Apollonia/Arsuf (Chapter 1); Castra Samaritanorum (Chapter 3); Dora/Dor (Chapter 4); Mikhmoret (Chapter 5); and Sycamina (Chapter 6). Introductory essays on the historical context of each settlement precede the presentation of the inscriptions. As with the previous volume, only an index of personal names follows the collection; a dedicated index and internet database are envisaged as a later phase of the project (H.M. Cotton [et al.], Corpus inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae, Volume I, Part 1 [2010], p. viii.). The work calls upon an impressive interdisciplinary and international team of scholars whose marshalling is far from the least impressive achievement of the editors: historians, linguists, archaeologists and curators, as well as the many friends of scholarship in religious communities in Israel. The editors pay generous tribute to Holum and C.M. Lehmann and K. Holum's Greek and Latin Inscriptions of Caesarea Maritima (2000), which is respectfully superseded by the new collection, and they express their gratitude to the present excavators at Caesarea for allowing the swift publication of texts recently recovered. The organisation of the texts from Caesarea under specific headings is clear and logical, revealing the persistence of the publicly written word on the coastline of Judaea/Palaestina from Hellenistic times to the eve of Islam (the editors acknowledge that thematic presentation does not suit the smaller numbers of inscriptions produced by the smaller settlements, p. v). The editors declare that they have tried to consult all the relevant authorities but it is difficult, given this pitch of scholarship, to imagine that they have missed anything of importance.
A rich variety of epigraphic media is revealed here comprehensively, from the lapidary inscription to the amulet, defixio, dipinto and ingot. Pilate's famous ‘Tiberieum’ inscription is authoritatively published (no. 1277) establishing the orthodoxy of Alföldy's identification of the Tiberieum as a lighthouse and not a cult-site (G. Alföldy, ‘Pontius Pilatus und das Tiberieum von Caesarea Maritima’, SCI 18 [1999], 85–108). Along the way, in the less well-known texts, the reader is introduced to some vivid ancient voices: animal-loving Christians from sixth-century Caesarea (no. 1153); the touching valediction for his dead children erected by a pious devotee of Osiris (no. 1531); the splendid previously unpublished curse of a prostitute (no. 1680); and the Hellenistic sling-bullet from Crocodilopolis bearing the phrase ‘take a taste (of this)!’ (no. 2092; cf. no. 2137 from Dor). The wry observations of the editors reveal the humanity of the project. Of the first- or second-century mosaic with feliciter at the entrance to the Praetorium, a text upon which Paul of Tarsus might have trodden, W. Eck observes: ‘one doubts whether those visiting the building, above all the tax-payers – if such people were admitted at all – would have been reassured by the greeting’ (no. 1303, p. 265). Elsewhere, he brings his expertise on governors and governmental structures to elucidate an honorary statue of Iulius Commodus Orfitianus (no. 1228, c. a.d. 165. Cf. the similarly authoritative remarks on the boundary between Syria-Phoenice and Judaea at pp. 830–6).
The collection is a sustained masterclass of the epigrapher's art. The principle of autopsy where possible is evident throughout. It makes possible the detection of a gypsum fill to cover a cutter's sloppy work (no. 1262) and the refutation of earlier inaccurate published descriptions of inscriptions (no. 1266, pace Lehman and Holum no. 12). Neat historical and epigraphic deduction restores the erased ‘legio XXII’ to no. 1201, from an aqueduct under Hadrian. An appreciation of letter-spacings facilitates the tentative identification of Septimius Severus and not Pertinax to no. 1211, a statue-base from Caesarea. The commentary on no. 1221, an inscription mentioning an emperor, shows the epigrapher reasoning with inconclusive textual remains. Awareness of the layers of language in the region comes through in J. Price's exposition of the Greek epitaph of Jewish priests, dating to the third to seventh century a.d. (no. 1504). He is as generous as he is ingenious in coping with the dreadful grammar of an epitaph to Severa and her children (no. 1548). The painstaking work affords the editors the occasional joy of encountering the ‘superb hand’ of the master-cutter (nos 1513 and 1481). Reconstructions are admirably restrained throughout.
There are very few quibbles: the slightly anodyne translation of [Fortissimo et] consultissimo iuventutis principi as ‘for the strongest and most prudent leader of the young generation’ (no. 1271) and the rendering of vicus of second-century Caesarea as ‘boroughs’ (no. 1241). Some items have been removed from the catalogue at the last moment but the judgement of the editors is certainly to be trusted and the ‘dead’ numbers present no difficulty for those consulting the collection. The pursuit of comprehensiveness naturally comes at the cost of some superfluity. Quite a few of the texts are very brief and it is difficult to see them having any realistic application in academic enquiry (see nos 1852–2079).
The collection maintains the superb standards of the project to date and is a gift for generations to scholarship. Of its many treasures, a special place must go to the evocative hapax legomenon of no. 1486, the epitaph of Iacus, son of Iulianus, suntekton – fellow-(wood?)worker – with his father in Caesarea.
