c.epist.lat.146 frühes II

[recto] [… 9 lines lost …] I say to him, 'Give me'; I say, 'a little money, I shall go', I say, 'to the friends of my father.' Likewise he entrusted to me a needle and linens; he gave me not a single as. I, however, collected a little money here and there and went to […] and […] and bought the few things I wanted. If the weather were favourable, he would go out to Alexandria; he was silent. Likewise he did not give me money, but a gold piece to my mother for clothes. 'This is,' he said, 'what your father entrusted to me.' But at the time I came, everything was lacking (?), both wool and…; and I found my mother pregnant; she could do nothing. Then after a few days she gave birth and could not help me. Likewise Ptolemes, my father, had a dispute over my clothes, and it happened that he had to go to Alexandria with the recruits, and he left me alone with my mother; we could do nothing in his absence. When we were about to leave there, my mother said, 'Let us wait for him until he comes, and I will come with you to Alexandria and escort you as far as the ship.' Saturninus was already ready to leave on that day when so great a dispute arose. I say to him, 'Come, intervene, if you can help Ptolemaeus my father.' He cared no more for me than for a toilet sponge, but only for his own business, and, absorbed in his own affairs as he was leaving, I say to him, 'Give me a little money so that I can come with my things to Alexandria for expenses.' He denied that he had any. 'Come,' he says, 'to Alexandria and I will give it to you.' I did not leave. My mother sold the linens for us for an as (?) so that I might come to Alexandria. [verso] To Claudius Tiberianus, his father, from Claudius Terentianus.