Official correspondence

Description

If the text is the whole document, it cannot have included the imperial constitutio, which is said to have been prefixed (4-5) nor the copy of the will, which is said to have been appended; no doubt this is to be explained by the fact that we have is explicity described as a copy. The text consists of a petition to Vettius Gallianus, acting-epistrategos (of the Thebaid), from a certain Aurelius Apollonius also called Sarapion, an Alexandrian citizen and landholder in Diospolis Parva. It thus enhanced value since it comes from an unusual provenance. In his petition the writer complains that Osaeus, whom he describes as his father's wife and who must therefore have been his step-mother, has cheated him in respect to the property left in his father's will. A copy of the subscriptio follows, dated to a year 25. The emperor is referred to in col. ii can only be Caracalla.