bracelets.  They have been pledged since the month Tybi of last year for eight... at the rate of a stater per mina.  If the cash is insufficient owing to the carelessness of Theagenis, if, I say, it is insufficient, sell the bracelets and make up the money.”  Here is an affectionate letter of invitation:  “Greeting, my dear Serenia, from Petosiris.  Be sure, dear, to come up on the 20th for the birthday festival of the god, and let me know whether you are coming by boat or by donkey, that we may send for you accordingly.  Take care not to forget.”

Here is an advertisement of a gymnastic display: 

“The assault-at-arms by the youths will take place to-morrow, the 24th.  Tradition, no less than the distinguished character of the festival, requires that they should do their utmost in the gymnastic display.  Two performances.”  Signed by Dioskourides, magistrate of Oxyrrhynchus.

Here is a report from a public physician to a magistrate:  “To Claudianus, the mayor, from Dionysos, public physician.  I was to-day instructed by you, through Herakleides your assistant, to inspect the body of a man who had been found hanged, named Hierax, and to report to you my opinion of it.  I therefore inspected the body in the presence of the aforesaid Herakleides at the house of Epagathus in the Broadway ward, and found it hanged by a noose, which fact I accordingly report.”  Dated in the twelfth year of Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 173).

The above translations are taken, slightly modified, from those in The Oxyrrhynchus Papyri, vol. i.  The next specimen, a quaint letter, is translated from the text in Mr. Grenfell’s Greek Papyri (Oxford, 1896), p. 69:  “To Noumen, police captain and mayor, from Pokas son of Onos, unpaid policeman.  I have been maltreated by Peadius the priest of the temple of Sebek in Crocodilopolis.  On the first epagomenal day of the eleventh year, after having abused me about... in the aforesaid temple, the person complained against sprang upon me and in the presence of witnesses struck me many blows with a stick which he had.  And as part of my body was not covered, he tore my shirt, and this fact I called upon the bystanders to bear witness to.  Wherefore I request that if it seems proper you will write to Klearchos the headman to send him to you, in order that, if what I have written is true, I may obtain justice at your hands.”

A will of Hadrian’s reign, taken from the Oxyrrhynchus Papyri (i, p. 173), may also be of interest:  “This is the last will and testament, made in the street (i.e. at a street notary’s stand), of Pekysis, son of Hermes and Didyme, an inhabitant of Oxyrrhynchus, being sane and in his right mind.  So long as I live, I am to have powers over my property, to alter my will as I please.  But if I die with this will unchanged, I devise my daughter Ammonous whose mother is Ptolema, if she survive me, but if not then her children, heir to my shares in the common house, court, and rooms situate in the Cretan ward.