Considerazioni a margine dell’epistula Hadriani de re piscatoria

This contribution aims to identify and analyze some defining aspects of Emperor Hadrian’s epistula de re piscatoria, one of the more significant testimonies of market legislation from the era of roman domination in Athens. The inscription, which survived partly in two fragments preserved in IG ii2 1103, has encountered renewed interest by scholars in recent years, in particular by Lytle, Purpura and Copete. The restorations of the text proposed by these authors and their discussion have helped to let emerge what can be considered a set of focal points, which will be re-examined here. One of these concerns time and place of the applicabil-ity of this imperial constitution, i.e. if it was (like suggested by older research) valid only in Eleusis during the Mysteries that took place there or if it was perhaps directed at all of Athens without any temporary limits. A similar problem regards the commodities the epistula was aimed at: Should it apply to fish only or to a wider range of products, perhaps even all edible goods? The provisions of the decree – in particular the prohibition of sales involving more than one intermediary – will then, together with those two questions (and their possible answers), lead to the general issue of the potential motivations and goals that brought Hadrian to the emanation of the epistula.