Two Petitions Concerning Civic Magistracies by a Gymnasiarch and Son of a Veteran

Abstract

This article publishes two petitions to the prefect of Egypt by a gymnasiarch of Oxyrhynchus named Quintus Marinus Claudianus, the son of a veteran. They were written on the respective sides of the same papyrus. The front carries a draft petition concerning appointments to municipal magistracies. On the back was copied another petition concerning the financing of spectacles by magistrates for a local festival, together with the official response. These texts provide an interesting window on some of the challenges facing civic magistracies in the towns of Roman Egypt in the late second century CE and state authorities’ responses to them, as well as new evidence for related imperial constitutions. They also present us with the son of a veteran who held an unusually high status compared to most veterans and their descendants in Roman Egypt. An appendix considers the remote possibility that the second petition was addressed to the emperor Septimius Severus when he visited Egypt at the turn of the third century and revisits the chronology of his sojourn in the province.