Gaius Iulius Philios
We will make translations and commentaries of all texts from early Roman Alexandria available eventually, but in a first go we present a small dossier that has received some attention earlier in the twentieth century. For the translations we have adopted a new format that brings out the structure of the text. Captions and occasional notes in the text clarify what is going on. In the translations we have also incorporated any changes in the reading of the Greek texts that have been proposed in learned journals since the texts were first published and that we have accepted. Such corrections are listed in the Berichtigungsliste der griechischen Papyrusurkunden aus Ägypten, a mouthful which appears in abbreviated form as “BL” in the translations.
There are five loan documents for Gaius Iulius Philios, a freedman of the emperor Augustus who made cash loans to various people in Alexandria he knew. He has been put down as a loan shark in the only publication devoted to this dossier (M. Schnebel, Aegyptus 13, 1933, 35-41). We do not think this estimation is correct but for now leave it to the reader to decide. The texts are referred to as “BGU” with a volume number and text number following. “BGU” is the conventional abbreviation for the serial publication of Greek papyrus documents from Berlin (Aegyptische Urkunden aus den königlichen Museen zu Berlin, Griechische Urkunden, from 1892 onwards).
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© Peter van Minnen 2007
Work in progress!
A translation of all documents from ancient Alexandria that survive on papyrus.
Sample Dossier
Gaius Iulius Philios
