PREFACE

The whole content of this volume is documentary. It falls into two parts. The first section, a miscellaneous group of documents of the Roman and Byzantine periods (3915-3932), is based on a nucleus of texts studied at a seminar held by Rea in the Ashmolean Library, Oxford, in Hilary and Trinity terms 1988. The members were graduate students in Ancient History at Oxford and visiting students from the universities of Bonn, Geneva, and Heidelberg. Each member took responsibility for one or more items, produced a preliminary transcript of each and gave a first account of it to the seminar. The editions printed here are by Rea; the work done by the members of the seminar is gratefully acknowledged by a note at the end of each introduction giving the name of the individual concerned. The opportunity has been taken to add some texts which seemed to be relevant to items of the original group, 3923, 3927, 3928. The interest in this section is very varied: note the libertus diui Augusti freedman of the divine Augustus in 3915, the stator police officer/guard in 3917, the praefectus classis Augustae Alexandrinae prefect of the Augustan fleet of Alexandria in 3920.

The second section, documents of the late Byzantine period, is chiefly concerned with the formulas occurring at the heads of contracts, in normal times consisting of a religious invocation of Christ or of the Trinity, and a date clause by regnal year or consulship or both, with month, day and indiction a cycle of fifteen years used for taxation and dating. The formulas are interesting because their changes reflect moments of political change and difficulty, and because they show the variety of wording and even reckoning of the date allowed to the local officials, see 3933-3962 General Introduction. Some special points of interest occur incidentally: evidence for the monetary value of gold in AD 614 (3958 26 n.), a school in Oxyrhynchus in 610 (3952 11 n.), the survival of the household of Flavius Apion III as an economic unit under the Persians after his death, which 3959 and 3960 allow us to place in the period July 619 to January 620, just about the time of the Persian invasion.

Again we are much indebted to our printers, H. Charlesworth and Co., whose skill and helpfulness have given us a smooth and speedy passage from copy to finished book.

February 1991

P. J. PARSONS
J. R. REA
General Editors
Graeco-Roman Memoirs