Papyrus Letter (Oxyrhynchus (Egypt), after 324 CE)

P.Oxy.XIV 1676

“ἀλλὰ πάντως κρείττονα εἶχες “No doubt you had something better to do

This delightful letter was excavated from a rubbish dump

At the beginning of the letter, Flavius Herculanus thanks Aplonarion for her latest letter to him. His main reason for writing is a complaint that she and her husband had not been at his son’s birthday party: ‘No doubt you had something better to do – that’s why you looked down on us’. Still, Herculanus writes that he missed her and hoped to see her again soon, ‘for we shall be delighted to receive you at any and every time you wish to see us’. The letter closes with greetings conveyed from his family to hers.

The letter has been described as ‘the most sentimental that has yet appeared among published papyri’ and hardly reflecting ‘ordinary friendship’ (Grenfell and Hunt). A very different question about the relationship between the two correspondents is raised by the verso of the papyrus. Herculanus describes himself as πάτρων ‘patron’. This loanword from Latin patronus was used to denote the former owner of a freed slave. The Roman society’s patronship network included relations between freedmen and -women and their former owners. Although freed slaves may have been more common in Roman society than in Hellenistic kingdoms, they were not unheard of in the latter (Finley & Treggiari). Herculanus was clearly a Roman citizen, perhaps a soldier or member of the civil service (Rea, p. 82). If Aplonarion was indeed a freedwoman, her duties to Flavius Herculanus would not have
ended with her new status and Herculanus, too, would also have some obligations towards her, although usually such relationships were not based on equality (Perry, pp. 69, 94). The letter itself, however, contains no reference to a previous master-slave relationship between the two correspondents nor does it indicate how Aplonarion acquired her freedom, if, indeed, she had been a slave. It may come as a surprise to us today that, if the speculation about the term πάτρων is correct, as a freedwoman there is a chance that Aplonarion owned slaves herself by the time she received this letter