List of Workers in the Vineyards (of Socrates?) (House B17) (original) (raw)

The text allows perhaps an insight into the business affairs carried out in the inner circle of Socrates' family. Here, it seems that Socrates is the scribe of this lease for his brother-in-law Sempronius Gemellus. The contract is made in the official form of a homologia, penned by a professional hand that is perhaps the hand of Socrates the tax collector himself. The unexperienced script of the subjective part of the contract may betray the hand of Polion, while Sempronius Gemellus may have signed the contract with his own hand below, followed by the subscription of the grapheion in Karanis. Two fragments form the papyrus sheet; the text is written with the fibres; the right and lower margins are preserved. On the back, there is one line with the fibres. The four hands on the recto can be classified as follows: The first is a very professional hand and wrote lines 1-8 (objective part of the contract, ὁ ὁμολογῶν); this is perhaps the hand of Socrates the tax collector himself. 1 The second hand of lines 9-17 (subjective part of the contract, ὁ]μ̣ ολογῶ εἰληφέναι) is that of a beginner, which R. Cribiore would classify as an "evolving hand". 2 The third hand wrote lines 17-19 in the official agreement (γέγον(εν) εἰϲ με [ἡ] ὁμολογία). That third hand is again much more practiced; it is perhaps that of Sempronius Gemellus himself. The fourth hand is that of the subscription by the employee of the grapheion of Karanis: it is the same handwriting as in P. Mich. VI 428, 19, a sale of a house, from 154 CE. The handwriting of this man in the grapheion shows the same initial alpha and the same way of abbreviations. His name remains unknown. 1 Compare SB VI 9263 for the letters iota, mu, and chi; SB XVIII 13306 for the letters alpha, eta, sigma, and tau; cf. van Minnen 1994 'House-to-House Enquiries' 244 n. 83; 245 n. 87. Van Minnen also proposed (p. 245, n. 87) that P. Mich. Inv. no. 4689 (unpublished) was written by Socrates. I thank B. Haug for forwarding to me the photo of that unpublished papyrus, and I agree with van Minnen's proposal. 2 Cribiore 1993 Writing, Teachers, and Students 102.