CORN DOLE ARCHIVE

in some way on age, e.g. 2902 5 seqq. tageis enrolled/stationed . . . pros ten ton hekkaidekaetōn sitodosian for the corn-distribution of the sixteen-year-olds. I take it to mean, therefore, that though it was necessary before the troubles to divide the population according to age for the distribution of the corn, afterwards persons of every age could be seen collecting the dole at the same time in the same place and their total number was less than had formerly been found in a single category, that of the omogerontes elderly persons.

The evidence for a dole in Hermopolis comes from a single document of the same period. In A.D. 261 a citizen registered himself "[for] the distribution [to come] to pass with good fortune of the corn ration granted to us [in abundance] by the great generosity of our [lords] Macrianus [and] Quietus Caesars Augusti" (WChr. 425 = P. Lond. 955, vol. iii pp. 127 seq.). Wilcken took this as a temporary measure as he did the very fragmentary reference to tesserae tokens/tickets and corn of the first year of Claudius II which he cited from a Leipzig papyrus in the introduction to his republication of the London document as WChr. 425 (P. Lips. inv. 483 = SB i 4514).The provenance of the Leipzig scrap is unknown. The date of it suggests the obvious possibility that it is a stray from the present archive, and it is certainly to be compared with 2924, see ibid. 6 n. The Alexandrian dole he visualized as standing and long established (Archiv iv 546). In Oxyrhynchus the dole was a standing arrangement; the dates of the new papyri range from 1 Claudius IIFor the possible implication of a slightly earlier date see 2903 10 n. to 3 AurelianExpressions of the form '1 Claudius II', '3 Aurelian', etc., are used throughout to represent briefly 'the first Graeco-Egyptian regnal year of Claudius II', 'the third Graeco-Egyptian regnal year of Aurelian', etc. and the distribution was on a monthly basis.

Perhaps the most likely hypothesis is that all these doles were arranged in much the same way. The earliest date that we have is in the reign of Macrianus and Quietus, but this may easily be accidental and the Alexandrian evidence may imply the existence of a dole there before them. We have relatively very little information about what begins to bear the appearance of an institution widespread in the cities of Egypt.See now below, 2941–2942, for new evidence of a dole—though perhaps a different sort of dole—in Antinoopolis.

Oxyrhynchus

It appears that these new documents all come from a single archive, probably from the records of the magistrates in charge of the dole. The slight doubt of their unity arises from the fact that though the inventory numbers indicate that the bulk of them were dug up during the third season of excavations at Behnesa, a few come from the first season and one from the fourth. The range of dates, however, is the same and some of the same documentary types occur in the pieces from the first and third seasons. The singleton from the fourth season (2923) is of the same period but of a type not occurring elsewhere in the group.

Qualifications

(a) epikrithentes

For receipt of the dole the usual basic qualification was the possession of a certain class of citizenship in Oxyrhynchus, expressed by the claim to have undergone scrutiny (epikrisis official screening/scrutiny).