marriage agreement and donatio mortis causa

Description

This text has two parts. The first (lines 1-8) is the end of a Greek marriage agreement, referred to as syngraphe. The surviving part of the marriage contract contains arrangements for the repayment of dowry in case of divorce and a provision ensuring that one party may retain control over property acquired after the date of the present agreement. Although the majority of such contracts were arranged by the husband and wife themselves, the parties in this settlement are both women. Apollonous, who undertakes the agreement (line 5), is responsible for returning the dowry in case of divorce (lines 1-4) and is liable to prosecution in event of default (lines 5-6). She operates on behalf of the husband in the marriage, and is presumably his mother. The second party is not clearly identified in the remaining fragment, but appears to be Tamarres (see lines 822n). The identity of the spouses whose marriage is at issue is also a matter of conjunction. They are evidently Kronous, a beneficiary of Tamarres (lines 11-20) and therefore probably her daughter, and Gaius Julius Isidoros: the names of these two are linked once in the marriage agreement (line 6), and one or both of them also appear in the division of property in contexts that make it practically certain that they are man and wife (lines 11, 20).;Lines 8-22 contain Tamarres' distribution of property. Her dispositions consist of at least three parcels of land (including one of 16 arouras: lines 12, 17, 18; also 19?) and a slave (lines 14-15), and provide for a payment to the household of Kronous. The text concludes with provisions for the alimentary support of the donor (line 21), and the name and the beginning of the signalments of the hypographeus. In the lost second column would have been the subjectively phrased subscriptions of Apollonous and Tamarres and the signatures of the hypographeus and the witnesses, if any.