I. EDICTS AND CIRCULAR LETTERS

1405. RESCRIPT OF SEVERUS: APPLICATION TO A STRATEGUS.

This papyrus, written in a small cursive hand, is an application to a strategus a military or civil governor of a nome by a man who had been appointed to the office of collector of money-taxes in a village of the Oxyrhynchite nome, and proposed to evade the duty by giving up his property in accordance with an Imperial rescript, of which a copy is prefixed. It is closely parallel to B. G. U. 473 (M. Chrest. 375), which contains the beginning of what was no doubt a similar application to a third-century strategus, preceded by a rescript of Septimius Severus and Caracalla concerning the cessio bonorum the legal surrender of property to satisfy debts or avoid obligations. In B. G. U. 473 the right-hand half of the lines is missing, and 1405 also is incomplete, having lost the earlier part of the rescript, which is mentioned in 890. 5, a third-century letter without a date, held office in the third year of an unnamed emperor, who on palaeographical grounds probably belonged to the period from Elagabalus to Valerian, so that the rescript, which is dated in Pharmouthi of the 8th year of, probably, a joint reign (cf. l. 8 ταμεῖον ἡμῶν our treasury), would in any case appear to have been issued by Severus and Caracalla; the fact that its date coincides in respect of the month and number of the regnal year with the date of the parallel rescript in B. G. U. 473 leaves little room for doubt as to the reign. 1405 in any case provides another specimen of the θεῖαι διατάξεις divine ordinances/imperial edicts referred to in C. P. R. 20 (W. Chrest. 402), which supplies the chief evidence concerning the cessio bonorum as a means of evading liturgies compulsory public services or duties; cf. Mitteis's commentary, Jouguet, Vie municipale, 412-15, and 1416. 6 and 1642, which also bear on this subject.

While the rescript in B. G. U. 473 appears, so far as it can be reconstructed, to be mainly a guarantee in general terms to some individual that the renunciation of his property would exempt him from further claims (cf. Mitteis, Hermes,