Letter from Gemellus to Sabinus
Letter from Gemellus to Sabinus with various questions and instructions.
One text, 3 sources · Trismegistos-Text 10784
Letter from Lucius Bellenus Gemellus to his son Sabinus about hay, documents and festivals TM 10784Kasr el Banat (Fayum)103 CE
The same ancient text or artifact as recorded by 3 records across 3 independent projects, recognised as one entity by its TM-Text identifier. View on Trismegistos →
A letter from the landowner Lucius Bellenus Gemellus to his son Sabinus, complaining about rotten hay, a dispute with a man from Psinachis who obtained a prefect's letter to the strategos, and asking for documents and the key to find them. He also orders cocks for the Saturnalia, food for Gemella's birthday feast, and animals to carry manure, written at Euhemeria in the Fayum around AD 103.
In English machine translation
[recto]
Lucius Bellenus Gemellus to his son Sabinus, greetings.
Aunes the donkey-driver has bought a rotten bundle of hay for 12 drachmas, and a small bundle, and the hay is rotten and all fallen apart like rubbish. Sabinus the Stammerer (?) from Psinachis, the one who was with you, brought to the city a letter of the prefect to Dionysios the strategos, ordering him to hear his case […] my violence (?) […] until he writes the […] of the hay for sowing. Where have you put the bank order for the hay and the loan of his mina, which is a written contract? Send the key and tell me where it lies, so that I may take them out, so that if I have to settle accounts with him I may have them. Do not do otherwise. Take care of yourself. Greet Epagathos and those who love us truly. Farewell. Choiak 12.
For the Saturnalia send ten cocks, having bought them, and for the birthday festival of Gemella send small fish and […] and bread, 1 artaba of wheat.
[recto, margin]
Send the animals to carry manure to the vegetable plot at Psinachis, and the manure baskets, since Pasis is crying out that it may not turn into mush because of the water; and let them bring him hay. Send the animals at once.
[verso]
Deliver to Sabinus his son from Lucius Bellenus Gemellus.
Several lines in the middle are damaged and the account of the dispute with Sabinus of Psinachis is uncertain. The Saturnalia was a Roman festival, notable here as celebrated by a Roman veteran's family in Egypt; 'genesia' here refers to a birthday celebration.
Working translation of the DDbDP edition, made with Claude Opus 5.5 from the edition and the catalogue records shown below (catalogued as Letter from Gemellus to Sabinus). It has not been reviewed by a papyrologist: check the edition before citing. Restorations follow the edition; […] marks lost text and (?) an uncertain reading.
p.fay.119
[r] Λούκιος Βελλῆνος Γέμελλος Σαβίνωι τῷ υἱῶι χαίρειν. ἠγόρακε Αὐνῆς ὁ ὀνηλάτης χόρτου δέσμην σαπρὰν ἐκ δραχμῶν ιβ καὶ μικρὰν δέσμην καὶ χόρτον σαπρὸν καὶ ὅλον λελυμένον ὡς σκύβαλον. Σαβῖνος ὁ Ψελλὸς ὁ ἀπὸ Ψινάχεος τὸν μετʼ ἐσοῦ εἰς πόλιν ἤνεγκε ἐπιστολὴν τοῦ ἡγεμόνος πρὸς Διονύσ…