A business letter, probably from the strategos Apollonios or a landowner of his circle, to Dioskoras, who farms the writer's lands, demanding payment for wine, wheat and lentils and complaining of his conduct and of unauthorized payments to Eutychos. It is dated 12 June 114 AD, probably from Hermopolis.
In English machine translation
[…] to Dioskoras, his own […], very many greetings.
[…] having understood and […] to pay me now […] having your whole account, of which you also have a copy. So cross over to Heptakomia with him, and also with Eutychos, whom you made master of my property. Humor him, and bring him there with you. And remember that for whatever you wrote you would add the price, you must pay these as you wrote […] the price of the wheat and the lentils […] and the other things […]. For I neither had the plough nor told you to give him anything. And even if I had appointed him, you could not have given to him without me or authority, if you are well disposed to me; nor did I instruct you to give to the one who accompanied me […], but you have already spent time staying in town since I sailed down, so that you might take the price of the wine at 5 silver drachmas each, in part. For you ought to have sent the price since then. But you wrote to me that […] Androkles, 'after a few days I will show you the price.'
[column 2]
On top of everything you wrote that Eutychos did not give me the price, and he wrote that 'I do not give it without you.' Know then that I will charge you the price of the wine at five drachmas. And if he does not receive it now (I have also written to him to cross over to Heptakomia until the matter is settled), so that the money may be given to Apollonios the strategos of Heptakomia and he may write to you that he has received the money. Above all, however, know that, having behaved this way in all your dealings with me, you are not going to escape me while farming all my lands. By the gods, I thought, when I was accompanying the prefect, that in Hermopolis I would find a talent for the […] brought in by you from the flax measured out in the storehouse.
Farewell, and […] that you do not escape me.
Farewell.
Year 17 of Imperator Caesar the lord, Pauni 18.
[verso]
To Dioskoros his friend.
The writer's name is lost; Apollonios, strategos of Heptakomia, is named in the third person, so he is probably not the writer. Year 17 of Trajan is meant by 'Imperator Caesar the lord'.
Working translation of the DDbDP edition, made with Claude Opus 5.5 from the edition and the catalogue records shown below (catalogued as Ein Geschäftsbrief an Dioskoras). It has not been reviewed by a papyrologist: check the edition before citing. Restorations follow the edition; […] marks lost text and (?) an uncertain reading.