Complaint over withheld bridal gifts and property taken by a husband TM 33701HermopolisEnde IV

[…] on behalf of Olympiane, daughter of Dionysios, former primipilarius, with Kastor her curator, councillor of the splendid city of the Hermopolites. The assisted party is an orphan of both parents. Now when her aforementioned curator Kastor was asked by a certain Besarion, former beneficiarius of this venerable office, on the basis of certain bridal gifts, as wishing to marry the girl, the curator, with the consent of the assisted party, accepted the marriage on agreed bridal gifts without a written contract; and since the man who wished to marry did not have the bridal gifts ready to provide, he made a written note to the present assisted party together with the curator, and they believed that on the strength of the note the bridal gifts would be provided, and for this reason the marriage was concluded. These things having been done in this way, and their life together having been arranged accordingly […], not long afterwards, when the bridal gifts were about to be demanded by the curator and by the married woman herself, we do not know with what intention, he did not pay them, but withdrew from the household in which the marriage had been celebrated, carrying off not only his own things but also some belonging to the married woman. Since therefore he has not paid the bridal gift but still owes it even now, and still retains in money what he plundered from the girl, and leaving her to live on her own he went away as if [...] himself to send [according to] the laws, (we ask) with the curator that these things be granted to her as she requests: first, that the bridal gift owed be paid to her in writing, and then also that what he carried off […] he restore to its proper place. For when these things have been done in this way, the harmony of the marriage will reasonably also be complete.