Bid for confiscated property

Description

A bid for the purchase of confiscated property. The bid is from Ptolemais, daughter of Agenor and granddaughter of Philiscos, submitted to Aelius Aphrodisios, strategus of the Oxyrhynchite nome, in the name of her daughter, Claudia Areia, for 16 arouras of catoecic land put up for sale near the epoikion of Artapatou in the middle toparchy. Ptolemais offered 3200 drachmas for 16 arouras, or 200 drachmas the aroura, a price which suggests that the land was still productive. Ptolemais and her daughter Claudia Areia, whom she mentions three times by name, owned all the land adjacent to the property upon which she was bidding. The right of neighbours to buy perhaps added weight to the bid, even when the land was in the hands of the fiscus. Neither Ptolemais nor Claudia Areia can confidently be identified in the papyri published up to now, but the husband and father was presumably a Klaudius Areius. He may have belonged to the family of Tiberius Claudius Areios who had served as strategus of the Heracleides division of the Arsinoite nome two generations earlier, 98-101