STRATONICEA (now Eski-hissar), one of the chief inland towns of Caria and mainly built by Antiochus Soter, derived its name from his wife Stratonice. The great Mithradates married thence his wife Monima. Not far from the town was the famous temple of Jupiter Chrysaorius, the centre of the political union of the Carian states. Stratonicea has been much explored by travellers; and, so early as 1709, Mr. Consul Sherard presented to the Earl of Oxford a book of Greek inscriptions copied by him at various places in Asia Minor. This volume is now in the Harleian collection. The most important monument of the town is the celebrated edict of Diocletian—in Greek and Latin—the first copy of which, by Sherard, is in the volume just mentioned. The late Colonel Leake[49] has shown that its date is about A.D. 303, and its object to direct those engaged in the traffic of provisions not to exceed certain fixed prices in times of scarcity. Fellows states that the names of many of the articles of food enumerated therein are still used by the peasantry of Asia Minor. _Inter alia_, we learn that silken garments were in common use, as Ammianus[50] pointed out, seventy years later; as also the rough coat or _birrhus_, the _caracallis_, or hooded cloak (afterwards adopted by the monks), the Gallic breeches and socks. The late date of the inscription is shown by its barbarous Latinity, above all, by the reduced value of the _drachma_ or _denarius_. Thus a denarius appears as the equivalent of a single oyster, or of the hundredth part of a lean goose! The names of the provisions recorded not only indicate the ordinary food of the people, but also the costly dainties of the epicure. Thus several kinds of honey, of hams, of sausages,[51] of salt and fresh-water fish, of asparagus and of beans, are noted. Gibbon has not failed to notice this inscription, though, in his day, it had been very imperfectly copied. Footnote 49: See Trans. Roy. Soc. of Literature, 1st series, 4to. vol. i. p. 181. 1826. Footnote 50: Ammianus was not acquainted with the true origin of silk. He still describes it, as did Virgil and Pliny, as a sort of woolly substance (_lanugo_) combed from a tree in China. Footnote 51: The derivation of the word “sausage” may not be generally known. “Icicium” means “minced meat”; “salsum icicium,” the same salted. From the latter comes the Italian _salsiccio_, the French _saucisse_, and the English sausage. So _jecur ficatum_ (Greek, συκωτὸν), hog’s liver, derived from the fattening of geese with figs (“pinguibus et ficis pastum jecur anseris albi,” Horat. Satir. ii. 8, 88) is preserved in the Italian _fegato_ and the modern Greek συκώτι, used for liver in general. It is curious to meet on a decree on the walls of a temple in Caria with _pernæ Menapicæ_, Westphalian hams.