Petition to the prefect against a sailor-diver who extorted an imperial estate lessee TM 11980Arsinoites, Ägypten145 - 147 A.D.

To Lucius Valerius Proculus, prefect of Egypt, from Ptolemaios son of Diodoros, also called Dioskoros, of those from the Arsinoite nome. Since your innate beneficence, lord governor, reaches all, I too ask to obtain it. There is a certain class of men in the nome, in a fixed number, who are called sailor-divers (nautokolymbetai); they are public servants who serve the administration of the waters and attend upon the shore-guards and the sowing-supervisors of the time, for which reason they are released from every poll tax and every liturgy, and moreover are fed from public funds, so that they are not permitted at all to engage in any other business. One of these, a certain Isidoros son of Mareis, a man exceedingly reckless and insolent in character, who through his agents corrupts the leases of the imperial estates for the sake of extortion and making money, as I shall prove at the proper time, attacked me too through one of his agents, a certain Ammonios surnamed Kaboi, a blameworthy man who has been publicly posted for his disorderly life, although I am a lessee of an imperial estate (ousia), pay considerable rents into the imperial account, and have spent considerable sums on the lease; he does not allow me to attend to the lease, but even shuts me out of my house and heaps insults upon me, to the point that he even extorted money from me. Therefore I have taken refuge with you, the protector of all, and I ask, since for the present you have declined your visit to the nome, that you order a letter to be written to the strategos of the Themistos and Polemon divisions to hear my case against him, because I can present the proofs on the spot concerning my having been insulted and extorted, so that in the most fortunate times of the greatest Emperor and under your charming prefecture I may be able to live undisturbed in my own home and may be helped. Farewell. (2nd hand) I, Ptolemaios son of Diodoros, have submitted this as stated above. (3rd hand) The strategos of the nome will do what is necessary. Give it back.