| PETITION
OF HORION AND RESCRIPT OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS AND CARACALLA ON AN ENDOWMENT ( AD 202 ) |
( Johnson, Coleman-Norton & Bourne, Ancient Roman Statutes, Austin, 1961, p. 223, n. 273 ). |
| This
is one of the few endowments recorded in Roman Egypt and is of interest
in that Aurelius Horion, who established the foundation, asks for the
emperors' ratification, while at the same time he indicates that the
purpose is to relieve the villagers from excessive state obligations. The document on papyrus was reported in 1904 (P. Oxy. IV, 705, 54-63 = Wilcken, Chrest. 407). |
ENGLISH TRANSLATION. |
| Rescript |
Emperor
Caesar Lucius Septimius Severus Pius Pertinax Augustus Arabicus Adiabenicus
Parthicus Maximus and Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Pius
Augustus to Aurelius Horion, greetings. We approve also this your benefaction, which you request permission to confer upon the villages of the Oxyrhynchites, in granting to different persons successively the right to enjoy it. It will be protected for this purpose in like manner and, as you wish, the income will not be diverted to expenditures for any other purpose. |
| Petition |
This
is the petition : To the most beneficent emperors, Severus and
Antoninus, saviors and benefactors of all men, Aurelius Horion, former
strategus and chief justice of the most glorious City of the Alexandrians,
greetings. Most benevolent emperors, there are certain villages of the Oxyrhynchite nome in which my sons and I possess estates. These have been weakened seriously by the annual liturgies imposed not only by the fisc, but also in keeping guard over the district, and they are in danger of being lost to the fisc and of leaving your fields uncultivated. Since my purpose is both philanthropic and useful, I wish to make to each village for its recovery some small gift to be used for the purchase of land, the income from which shall be devoted to the support and the expense of the annual liturgies . . . |