The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part 12

"...contrary to the just apportionment of the liturgy, so that I resign my property to him in accordance with the Imperial decree cited above, and declare that I..."

1. you ceded: cf. cessions in lines 3 and 9. Elsewhere the usual verb is to resign, e.g., line 24 and 1417. 6. The preceding words may have been "the property"; cf. lines 5-6.
2. "from which" would hardly fill the lacuna before "it is clear," and "you ceded" may be in a dependent clause governed by, for example, "since."
3. "to our [Treasury]": cf. line 8 and introduction.
5. "to the [person nominated]": "to the person proposed," the word expected here, is too long. "To the person given" would not give the right sense, and the vestige of the first letter does not suit "d".
6-7. The reading is very uncertain; but, though "the" is preferable to "the," "the third" referring to the customary third in C. P. R. 20, which Mitteis supposes to have been given back to the owner, is inadmissible. "The appropriate" is possible, or "the appropriate things" with "tic" in line 7, but then "par" does not fill up the space before "exei," and no other compound of "exei" to have suits the vestiges. "Po," if correct, suggests either an adjective beginning with "upo" under or else "political," but "the political" does not seem to occur in papyri, and "from the political," with a supposed reference to "the share falling to the city," which has been sometimes connected with the customary third in C. P. R. 20, does not yield a satisfactory sense; for, if the city paid one-third of the expenses of liturgies, a regulation would not be expected allowing a person who, in return for his nominee's property, himself undertook a liturgy to obtain "from the city's account" the balance of expenses incurred. The supplement [le] is moreover rather short for the lacuna before i (which is more probable than r), and as the sense expected is that the nominator would, on receipt of his nominee's property, have to provide the rest of the expenses himself, probably the word refers to the nature of the liturgy in question. "G" might be read for "t" in the end of the word, for which "or also" is a possible, though less suitable, substitute. "I" would then be the termination of another verb in the future.
11. Cf. C. P. R. 20. i. 15-16: "There exists from the laws and the divine ordinances [the] help that one should suffer no violence."
16. Sinkepha: a village in the upper toparchy; cf. 1285. 65.
20. "Village": there is an implied contrast with "metropolitan"; cf. 1283. 4, collectors of money-taxes of the metropolis for the middle toparchy of the Peenopae area, and 1444. introduction.
26. For [decree] cf. line 11, note. "At interest" might equally well be read; but "means" is expected at this point, though the next words are obscure. The amount of the property-qualification in extant papyri concerning tax collectors in villages ranges from 700 drachmae to 3 talents 3,200 drachmae; cf. P. Giessen 58. introduction.

1406. EDICT OF CARACALLA CONCERNING SENATORS.

This short edict of Caracalla has lost the ends of lines, but the sense is clear. Senators who assault or use unseemly language towards the president or other members of their body are to be deprived of their rank. Senates were first instituted in the nome-capitals by Septimius Severus about A.D. 202, as at Alexandria (cf. Wilcken, Grundz. 41), and their meetings, for reports of which see 1413-15, are likely to have been rather turbulent, at any rate in the early days.