The Pocket Pindar The Antinoupolis Codex and Pindar’s Readership in Graeco-Roman Egypt

The parchment codex published as P.Ant. II 76 and III 212 contains remains of Pindar’s Olympians 5 and 6 along with scanty traces of marginal notes. Further conservation and study allows us to now roughly reconstruct the format of the original manuscript, and new imaging techniques have revealed better readings of the marginalia. In this speculative article, I explore the Pindar codex’s form, content, and the particular context of Antinoupolis. In the process, I touch upon the question of Pindar’s popularity in Roman Egypt, book production in Antinoupolis, and the form and function of the early codex. Taking all available evidence into account, I propose that we might have a pocket codex of Pindar’s complete works – perhaps intended for casual reading.

A strategos on Trial before the Provincial Governor: a New Look at a Petition to the Roman Prefect of Egypt (P.Wisc. I 33)

P.Wisc. 1 33 is a petition reporting an act of violence, supposedly committed against a strategos of the Arsinoite nome. A re-examination of the papyrus reveals that the strategos in question was not the victim, but was himself being summoned for trial before the governor. The document thereby attests to the most high-profile prosecution of an official in Roman Egypt for which documentary evidence survives.