Palladas and

the Yale Papyrus Codex

(P. CtYBR inv. 4000)
Edited by

Maria Kanellou
Chris Carey

LEIDEN | BOSTON

For use by the Author only | © 2023 Rodney Ast

Contents

Acknowledgements vii
Abbreviations viii
Contributors xi

1 Introduction 1
Maria Kanellou and Chris Carey

2 Observations on the Yale Papyrus Codex: Epigrammatic Grouping and

Subgeneric Variety 7
Maria Kanellou and Chris Carey

3 Skoptic Epigram in the Yale Papyrus Codex 21

Lucia Floridi

4 Palladas Sequences in the Greek Anthology and the Yale

Papyrus Codex 30
Kathryn Gutzwiller

5 Palladas’ Philosophical and Gnomic Epigrams and the Yale

Papyrus Codex 42
Ginevra Vezzosi

6 Imagery in the Yale Papyrus Codex: A Semiotic Probe 54

William J. Henderson

7 A Sarmatian Family of Mediocre Prytaneis 66

Rodney Ast

8 Su�fering from Gout: Intermingling Greek and Latin Material in the Yale
Papyrus Codex 74
Maria Kanellou

Appendix 1 87
Appendix 2 88

Bibliography 89
General Index 96
Index Locorum 99

For use by the Author only | © 2023 Rodney Ast

 Chapter 7
A Sarmatian Family of Mediocre Prytaneis
Rodney Ast
By nature, skoptic epigrams tend to be rooted in time
and place.*,1 They are the product of speci��c past cir-
cumstances, details of which are often hard to recover.
This obscurity often frustrates attempts at using them as
sources for ancient history. Even if one can glimpse the
actual circumstances and targets of the poems, the view
is nearly always partial and indirect. Furthermore, inter-
pretations sometimes say more about one’s own historical
interests than about the subject matter itself. All of this
makes the business of reading epigrams as history quite
messy. Still, it is an exercise worth doing as long as the epi-
grams are met on their own terms.
This chapter focuses on the ‘Sauromates epigram’ (26
W p. 11, ll. 27–35 of the Yale papyrus codex). It attempts
to show that a close reading of the poem reveals a sim-
ilar interest in the kind of topical subject matters found
in other poems of the codex and in verses attributed to
Palladas, especially in local o���cials who su�fer from greed,
corruptibility, and other ��aws.2 It argues that this topical-
ity contributes to the elusiveness of the ‘Sauromates epi-
gram’ because, as with other epigrams, the subject of the
poem is unknown to us, but was most likely a municipal,
not an imperial, o���cial.
The epigrams of the Yale papyrus codex are rife with
allusions to speci��c places and people, many of which are
associated with Egypt’s southern Thebaid region. Several
of the people might have been locally signi��cant pub-
lic ��gures in their day but at our distance they are quite
obscure. These include a man named Klematios (4 W p. 4,
ll. 20–37), two people from Egypt’s Hermopolite nome
called Hermaios and Neilos (7 W p. 5, ll. 10–14 and 8 W
p. 5, ll. 15–25), a Demetrios (11 W p. 6, ll. 5–9),3 a Gestios
* I thank the editors for inviting me to contribute to their collective
volume and for their comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
1 This is stressed, rightly in my view, in Nisbet (2003) xv and 12, though
the rule does not apply of course to epigrams on stereotyped ��gures
such as the ones composed by Loukillios.
2 On the topicality of the papyrus codex, see also Wilkinson (2012a)
35–6; Floridi in this volume pp. 27–9. Recently, Colombo (2021) has
advanced an interpretation that overlaps somewhat with the pre-
sent chapter, even though the two were written independently of
each other.
3 The title of 11 W reads εἴς τινα Δημήτριον (‘on a certain Demetrios’).
The lack of speci��city in τινα coupled with the commonness of the
name Demetrios suggests that this is a minor contemporary ��gure,
© Rodney Ast, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004521353_008
For use by the Author only | © 2023 Rodney Ast
who could be the Gessios found in the epigrams attrib-
uted to Palladas in the Greek Anthology (19 W p. 9, ll. 22–4
and 20 W p. 9, ll. 25–9),4 a certain Lasthenes who may have
been a resident of the Lykopolite village of Skinepoïs (22
W p. 10, ll. 12–18),5 a Heron (24 W p. 10, ll. 24–9), and a
corrupt council chairman whose name is not preserved or
was never openly stated (30 W p. 13, ll. 1–32). Aside from
these local personalities, there are a handful of references
to mythical and religious ��gures,6 and maybe to a Caesar
(15 W p. 7, ll. 9–15).7
On the whole, the setting of the poems in the Yale
codex can be described as parochial. Before looking at
ways in which the ‘Sauromates epigram’ ��ts this setting,
I give here the Greek text found in the editio princeps fol-
lowed by a translation.
πρυ]ταν⟨ε⟩ίας ἄ�(ων)
[    ± 25    ] ἐπ̣ίφθο̣νον εἶναι
[   ± 14   ] ο̣ υ̣ [ ]̣ ν̣ ὁ Σαυρομ̣ άτης
[   ± 17   ] ̣ ε̣ἰ[̣ ς] Ἰνδούς ποτε πλεύσας 30
[   ± 12   ]εν θαῦμ̣α̣ μέν ἐστιν ἴσως,
ἀ�ὰ [δὶς ἐπρυτάνε]υσ̣ ε πα̣ ρ̣ ᾿ ἡ[μ]ῖ ̣ ν̣ ̣ καί, τὸ μέγιστον,
δὶς̣ π̣ρ̣[υτα]νε̣ ύ̣ σα̣ ντος κλ̣ηρ̣ ̣ονόμος γέγονεν.
τέσσαρ̣ ες οὖ̣ν εἰς [τ]αὐτὸ̣ ̣ σ̣υν̣[ε]λθ̣ οῦσαι πρυτανεῖα̣[ι]
οὐκ ἂν ἐποί[̣ η]σα̣ ̣ν Σ̣α̣υρ̣ ̣ομάτ̣ην̣ ̣ [τ]ετραπλῇ{ν}. 35
not a historical person such as Demetrios of Phaleron; cf. Wilkinson
(2012a) 141–2.
4 This individual has been viewed as a key ��gure to establishing
Palladas’ date; Wilkinson (2012a) 151–2 cites the relevant scholarship.
5 It is unclear from the fragmentary state of the verses whether the
Skinepoite resident and the man named Lasthenes are the same
person. The name Lasthenes is not common in contemporary
sources, and if he is not the Skinepoite resident, then the reference
could be to a historical or literary ��gure; see Wilkinson (2012a) 157;
Kanellou/Carey in this volume p. 8.
6 There is the god Hermes (31 W p. 14, ll. 1–27) – other references are
to his city, Hermopolis (7 W p. 5, ll. 10–14 and 8 W p. 5, ll. 15–25) –
Fate (2 W p. 3, ll. 18–32), Kalliope and the Muses (3 W p. 4, ll. 4–19
and 20 W p. 9, ll. 25–9), Pluto (24 W p. 10, ll. 24–9), Triphis (29 W
p. 12, 32–4), Phaethon and his sisters (33 W p. 16, ll. 14–19), possibly
Oinomaos, father of Hippodameia (11 W p. 6, ll. 5–9), and a descend-
ant of Agenor (3 W p. 4, ll. 4–19). See Henderson, W. J. in this volume
pp. 63–5.
7 The word Καῖσαρ possibly appears twice, but in each instance the
reading is very tenuous.
A Sarmatian Family of Mediocre Prytaneis
On the prytanies of others (or of another)8
… is enviable
… the Sauromatian
… once having sailed to the Indians
… it is amazing perhaps,
but he served for us as head of the council on two occasions
and, what is best,
he was the heir to one who served as council chair twice.
Still, even if these four stints as head of the council were
added together,
they would not make a fourfold Sauromates.9
1 The Poet and the City
The ‘Sauromates epigram’ is framed by what I term the
prytania motif, which is announced already in the title:
[πρυ]ταν⟨ε⟩ίας ἄ�(ων) (‘on the prytanies of others (or
of another))’. The ��rst editor interpreted πρυτανεύω and
its cognates in this epigram as referring to military cam-
paigning. This interpretation led to the conclusion that
the unnamed ‘Sauromatian’ of the poem was the Emperor
Galerius. Details of this argument are laid out elsewhere
and do not need to be reviewed here.10 It is important just
to note that the identi��cation of the subject with Galerius
had implications for the editor’s dating of both the poem
and Palladas himself.11
8 The simple slash used to abbreviate α�- in the title of the epi-
gram is not by itself semantically important and can be used
with other grammatical cases besides the genitive – a graph-
ically similar stroke abbreviates ἄ�(α) in P. Oxy. 56.3874.24
(c.345/6?; the image can be accessed at http://papyri.info/ddb-
dp/p.oxy;56;3874). Normally the context will show which in��ec-
tion is meant, but the context here is ambiguous and ἄ�(ου) is
also possible (‘on the prytanies of another man’ (?)). The nom-
inative ἄ�(ο) (‘another poem’, i.e. on prytanies, εἰς πρυ]ταν⟨ε⟩ί-
ας) seems unlikely because one would expect ἄ�ο before the
prepositional phrase describing the epigram, as with ἄ�ο εἰς
Νε̣ ̣ῖ[̣ λον on p. 5, l. 26 (9 W).
9 The translations given throughout this chapter are my own.
10 The interpretation was set out in most detail in Wilkinson
(2012b); see also Wilkinson (2012a) 58–60 and (2015b) 90–2.
11 I omit any consideration of the date of the codex and, by exten-
sion, the poet himself, because these issues are not relevant here;
for discussion elsewhere, see Wilkinson (2009), (2012a) 54–7,
(2012b); Colombo (2021). A topic related to the date of Palladas
is the identity of the poet of the epigrams in the Yale papyrus
codex; for bibliography on this, see the Introduction of this vol-
ume p. 5 and Gutzwiller’s chapter p. 30, n. 4. For the most part, I
limit myself to the epigrams preserved in the codex, which I take
as being composed by a single individual. Occasionally, how-
ever, I adduce verses attributed to Palladas that focus on themes
and situations related to my argument, especially those dealing
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67
If one stays closer to the text and its context, then
the perspective shifts from emperors and their cam-
paigns to local politicians. To see this, let us look ��rst
at the meaning of the verb πρυτανεύω and its cognates,
since this really is the crux of the matter. While πρύτανις
can carry the general sense of a ‘chief’, ‘leader’, or ‘high
authority’,12 the verb πρυτανεύω is unparalleled in the
meaning ascribed to it in the editio princeps, ‘to cam-
paign militarily’.13 Basically, the term denotes the prin-
cipal representative of some ��xed body, whether a tribe,
a council, or even an army, as in Pindar’s Pythian 2.58,
where Hieron of Syracuse is addressed as the ‘leader and
lord over many beautifully-crowned streets and the army’
(πρύτανι κύριε πο�ᾶν μὲν εὐστεφάνων ἀγυιᾶν καὶ στρατοῦ),
or in Herodotos 6.110, where πρυτανεία describes a system
in which each Athenian general occupied the o���ce of
chief army commander for a day (πρυτανηίη τῆς ἡμέρης).14
However, the word is nowhere synonymous with στρατεύω
or ἐπιστρατεύω (‘to campaign militarily’ or ‘to wage war’).15
Of the attested meanings of the term πρυτανεύω, none
suits the 3rd/4th-century context of the epigram better
than the very common one: ‘to serve as the head of the
city council’.16 The prytanis acted as chief representative
of the city council (βουλή) for his term of o���ce.17 The posi-
tion is best attested in 3rd-century papyri from Roman
Egypt, which is unsurprising given that, beginning in the
early part of that century, municipal status was extended
to metropoleis throughout the province. Responsibilities
of the o���ce included calling and presiding over meetings
of the council. At these, the prytanis introduced business
for discussion and voting, and was thus in a position to
see policies through. Nominations to city o���ces were also
to some degree in his hands, as were municipal ��nancial
matters. Generally described, the prytanis ensured that
the business of the city was conducted smoothly, while
also serving as a link to the central government, which
with corrupt or incompetent local politicians. The commonality
of these themes might suggest they were composed by a single
person, but this is not a topic I investigate.
12 Wilkinson (2015b) surveys the use of the term and its cognates
from the archaic period to late antiquity.
13 In Wilkinson (2012a) 163, the editor translates the verb as ‘to
campaign’; in Wilkinson (2015b) 91, he prefers the translation ‘to
wield authority’, although, as Cameron (2016a) 51–2 points out,
his overall interpretation hinges on the verb meaning ‘to cam-
paign successfully’.
14 See Wilkinson (2015b) 88.
15 Cameron (2016a) 51–2.
16 Preisigke (1927) s.v. and (1931) Abschnitt 8 (Ämter).
17 The standard work on councils in Egypt is still Bowman (1971),
the third chapter of which (53–67) is devoted to the o���ce of
prytanis. The title proedros was sometimes used synonymously
with prytanis.
68
was represented by the court of the prefect. His term of
o���ce seems to have been one year; this was almost cer-
tainly the case for the 3rd and early 4th centuries, while
for the later part of the 4th century the situation is less
clear. Furthermore, the o���ce of prytanis could be held
iteratively and even in two consecutive years, though
examples of the latter are rare.18 The position of prytanis
was marked by prestige, as is obvious from the many ref-
erences not only to current but also to former prytaneis in
documents dating to the 3rd and 4th centuries.19 A ��tting
example is P. Oxy. 44.3184a.4–6, a memorandum dated
Oct./Nov. 296 that contains a list of village liturgists and
is addressed to a man named Aurelius Asclepiades, also
called Achillion, who was a former hypomnematographos,
gymnasiarch, city councillor, and two-time prytanis of
the glorious and most glorious city of the Oxyrhynchites:
γε(νομένῳ) / ὑπομ(νηματογράφῳ) γυμ(νασιάρχῳ) βου(λευτῇ)
δὶς πρυτανεύσαντι τῆς λαμ(πρᾶς) / καὶ λαμ(προτάτης)
Ὀξυρυ(γχιτῶν) πόλεως. Just as the person being attacked
in the epigram under discussion, Αsclepiades was prytanis
twice.
As the head of the council, chosen by its members and
possibly con��rmed by the prefect, a prytanis had to be
of bouleutic status, which was also hereditary, if not de
jure then at least de facto.20 Thus, it is not surprising to
��nd in the ‘Sauromates epigram’ the poet talking about a
two-time prytanis who was the heir to another two-time
prytanis (ll. 32–3). The former may have inherited his
bouleutic status from the latter, or at least the necessary
property to claim such status. On the basis of this status,
he was then eligible to serve as the prytanis of his city.
The prytania motif plays a prominent role not only in
the ‘Sauromates epigram’, but also in other verses clustered
around pages 11–13 of the Yale papyrus codex. In several
of these the text is too poorly preserved to reveal the pre-
cise meaning of the word. For example, πρύτανις appears
as the last word of epigram 25 W (p. 11, ll. 22–6), the one
directly preceding the ‘Sauromates epigram’. Although the
poem is very fragmentary, the mention of wealth (there is
18 For discussion of tenure, see Bowman (1971) 61–5.
19 A search of the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri (www
.papyri.info) reveals that there are references to acting or former
prytaneis in over 200 extant documentary papyri. P. Oxy. 17.2110,
minutes recorded on 6 Oct. 370 of a meeting of the Oxyrhynchus
city council, is among the latest attestations of the o���ce; so
too P. Worp 26, a fragment concerned with municipal a�fairs at
Herakleopolis that references the πρυτανεία and dates to the late
4th/early 5th century.
20 See Bowman (1971) 28–32 on the hereditary nature of member-
ship in the gymnasial classes, from which leading bouleutai were
drawn. Whether sons inherited bouleutic status per se or rather
inherited the property that made them eligible for this status is
unclear; in practice, such a distinction was likely immaterial.
For use by the Author only | © 2023 Rodney Ast
Rodney Ast
a πλουτ- word in l. 23, likely a verb and perhaps a conative
or ingressive imperfect) and maybe gold (χ]̣ ρ̣υσός, l. 25)
suggests a greedy and corrupt municipal politician as the
intended target.21
Then comes the ‘Sauromates epigram’ itself (ll. 27–35),
featuring four instances of the term πρυτανεύω and its cog-
nates. On the next page, the word πρυτανεία crops up at
the end of line 3, but there is nothing else in the verses
that might shed light on the context.22 It is noteworthy
that the same page contains the ��rst couplet of a poem
(29 W p. 12, ll. 32–4) addressed to the city of Lykopolis by
the goddess Triphis, whose cult centre was at Tripheion,
aka Athribis. In these verses, the goddess probably warns
the city, which is said to have su�fered much, of some
impending a���iction (τὸ νόσημα) that it should avoid ��ee-
ing towards.23 The editor, who understands the poet to say
that Triphis su�fered much, suggests that the context is
political and the a���iction some local ‘strife’, perhaps even
the destruction of the goddess’ temple at the end of the
3rd or beginning of the 4th century.24 While the epigram
does not use any form of the word πρυτανεία, it shares
with other poems in this section an apparent concern for
the well-being of a city (polis).
On page 13 (ll. 30–1), we get more, albeit our last, mus-
ings on the topic of πρυτανεία, and here the meaning can
be more or less determined: πρυτανεύων refers to a council
head. These are the relevant lines:
οὐ δύνασαι κλέπ̣[τειν ± 8 ] . . σως πρυτανε[ύων]
ἔκλεπτες πιθαν[οῖς δάκρυσι] τῆς πόλεως.
You are not able to steal … as (ὡς) in your time as
head of the council
you stole from the city while shedding specious tears.
21 Wilkinson (2012a) 162 o�fers a similar interpretation: ‘… the
appearance of πλουτεῖ (or perhaps ἐπλούτει) in line 23, and possi-
bly also χρυσός (or φιλόχρυσος) in line 25, might suggest a connec-
tion with the politician accused of stealing from the city (page 13,
lines 30–31).’
22 See Wilkinson (2012a) 162.
23 ἡ Τρῖφις τάδε φησί· ‘Λύκων πόλι, πο�ὰ παθο̣ ῦσα̣ ,̣ / εἰς τὸ νόσημα
φυγεῖν τοῦτο μόλις θέλετε’ (‘Triphis says this: ‘Lykopolis, having
su�fered much, hardly do you want this, to ��ee towards a���ic-
tion”). I am indebted to Peter Parsons for this interpretation,
which he communicated to the volume editors in an email
dated 20/3/21. It di�fers from that of the ��rst editor in taking
Λύκων πόλι as vocative (not dative) and as subject of the partici-
ple παθ̣οῦσ̣α̣. Cf. Henderson, W. J. in this volume p. 57.
24 Wilkinson (2012a) 169. Similarly, van Minnen (2016) 56–7 con-
nects the poem with the secularisation of the Tripheion, which
he suggests Palladas took to be the punishment for the revolt in
Upper Egypt against Diocletian.
A Sarmatian Family of Mediocre Prytaneis
The reference to the polis points to municipal politics
and leaves no doubt that the subject of the verses (and
the target of the poet’s ridicule) is a city o���cial.25 Just as
the council chairman in the fragmentary poem before the
‘Sauromates epigram’ may have enriched himself, this one
is accused of stealing. The lines are reminiscent of verses
ascribed to Palladas (AP 11.283) in which a foreigner from
Chalkis is said to steal from the city while crying lucrative
tears (the name of the city is not stated, and the foreigner
is not called a prytanis):26
πο�οὶ πο�ὰ λέγουσιν, ὅμως δ’ οὐ πάντα δύνανται
ῥήμασιν ἐξειπεῖν ῥεύματα σῶν παθέων·
ἓν δ’ ἐπὶ σοῦ παράδοξον ἐθαυμάσαμεν καὶ ἄπιστον,
δάκρυα πῶς κλέπτων εἶχες ἑτοιμότατα.
Χαλκίδος ἐκ γαίης ἀπεχάλκισε τὴν πόλιν ἡμῶν, 5
κλέπτων, καὶ κλέπτων δάκρυσι κερδαλέοις.
People are doing a lot of talking, but still they are not able
to express in words all the streams of your vices.
And we were astonished by one thing that occurred when
you were in o���ce, which contradicted all expectations,
something quite unbelievable,
how you could cry so readily while stealing.
Coming from the land of brazen Chalkis, he stripped our
city of brass by his
thieving, and while thieving he shed lucrative tears.27
A whiner from Chalkis (Χαλκίδος ἐκ γαίης) cunningly
stripped (ἀπεχάλκισε) the poet’s city of cash, and Palladas
drives home the point with an ethnic pun. The technique,
discussed more below, of punning on a person’s name or
place of origin is also the hallmark of several epigrams in
the Yale papyrus codex.
Elsewhere in the codex, the poet targets local o���-
cials in a way reminiscent of Palladas in the Anthologia
Palatina. At the bottom of page 10 (ll. 24–9 (24 W)) there is
a partially preserved epigram, possibly in dialogue form,28
about a certain greedy o���cial named Heron who is
nominated to act as an ambassador to the Underworld
25 As Cameron (2016a) 52 states: ‘The man is not just a thief but an
embezzler, stealing public funds placed in his trust as prytanis of
the city council’. Wilkinson (2012a) 162 ad l. 26 ��nds the meaning
of πρυτανεύων unclear; cf. Wilkinson (2015b) 92 n. 29.
26 Wilkinson (2012a) 170–1 points out the similarity between 30 W
(p. 13, ll. 30–1) and Pall. AP 11.283.
27 For Palladas’ epigrams, I use Paton (1999b). There is a pun in κερ-
δαλέος: it can denote something that is ‘cunning’ or ‘lucrative’,
both of which meanings are operative here; see Henderson, W. J.
(2008a) 109.
28 See Wilkinson (2012a) 159.
For use by the Author only | © 2023 Rodney Ast
69
apparently on behalf of a city.29 The reason for the
embassy is local discord (στάσις), which requires the
intervention of a member of the municipal elite; thus,
here as well, the register is very much in keeping with the
‘Sauromates epigram’:
ἄ�ο
τὴν στάσιν εἰ παῦσαι θέλομεν καὶ τὴν̣ [ἔ]ρ̣ιν̣ ̣, ὄντως
θαυμαστὴν γνώμην βούλομαι εἰσαγαγεῖν·
χειροτονήσωμεν πρὸς τὸν Πλούτωνα κατελθεῖν
πρεσβευτάς. – τίνας οὖν πείσομεν; – οὐκ ἄπορον. 28
κείσθω πέντε τάλαντα· πάλιν πει̣ σθήσεται Ἥρων
Another [epigram]
If we want to stop the discord and ��ghting,
I shall introduce a truly amazing motion:
Let us nominate ambassadors to go down to Pluto.
– And whom shall we persuade? – There is a way!
Lay out ��ve talents and Heron will be persuaded again …
The ��rst speaker states that the only way to end the unrest
and ��ghting in the city (the precise locality is not speci-
��ed) is to send ambassadors to the Underworld, presum-
ably to settle a peace treaty. The interlocutor asks whom
they should appoint for this,30 and the speaker comes up
with the ‘great’ idea of paying a man named Heron ��ve
talents to go there. Apparently, this Heron had previously
accepted money to act as ambassador on a major (should
we assume futile?) embassy, for it is suggested that for the
right price he would likely agree to do it again (πάλιν πε̣ι-
σθήσεται). The editor maintains that the background for
the poem could have been a local dispute that required the
intervention of municipal liturgists, who were sought to
��nance an embassy to some o���cial mediator.31 Although
the parallel he cites from a documentary papyrus is actu-
ally not applicable to the situation implied in the poem,32
29 The name Heron could be a play on the word ‘hero’ (ἥρως),
evoking the image of mythical heroes who undertook such trips
(e.g. Odysseus and Aeneas); on this point, see Wilkinson (2012a)
51. Furthermore, the fact that Pluto, the god of wealth, and not
Hades is referred to in line 4 underscores the theme of money
in the epigram (I thank Maria Kanellou for pointing this out
to me).
30 It is possible that this is a question posed by the speaker himself.
31 Wilkinson (2012a) 158–9.
32 Wilkinson (2012a) 159 refers to the petition P. Leit. 5 (Tebtynis;
c.180 CE) and summarises it saying that a certain Orsenouphis
tries ‘to get out of the liturgy of tax-collecting on the grounds
that he is ἄπορος … As evidence, [the man] cites an earlier letter
from an o���cial excusing him from being an ambassador on the
same grounds (P.Leit. 5.19–39)’. Orsenouphis’ earlier complaint,
70
he is right, in my view, to identify the background of 24 W
as that of the municipal politics of liturgical nominations,
in which money and status were intertwined. He suggests
that Heron was perhaps ‘known for his unwillingness to
perform civic duties without extraordinary remuneration’,33
whereas I wonder if Heron is mocked for his tendency
to do anything for money, even go to the Underworld. In
either case, the dramatic setting of the poem urges one to
think of a meeting of the local council where di���culties
of the city were discussed and motions to solve them were
voted on; the speaker presents himself as having taken
part in the meeting but, by mocking Heron, he distances
himself from the described situation.
The theme of an embassy sent to the Underworld
recurs in AP 10.97, another epigram ascribed to Palladas.
In it the speaker calls himself a ‘councillor of the dead’:
λίτραν ἐτῶν ζήσας μετὰ γραμματικῆς βαρυμόχθου,34
βουλευτὴς νεκύων πέμπομαι εἰς ἀΐδην.
After spending a pound of years with the laborious gram-
marian’s art
I am now being sent to Hades as a councillor of the dead.
Whatever ‘councillor of the dead’ means, there is a clear
connection made between an embassy to the Underworld
and the city council, because in Egypt of the 3rd and
4th century, where there was a councillor (βουλευτής),
there was also a city council (βουλή).35 Thus, the epigram
however, concerned his appointment to the council of elders
(πρεσβυτερεία) and not to the post of ambassador (πρεσβευ-
τής): Ὀρσενούφ[ε]ως / Ὀρσε[νο]ύ̣[φε]ως ἐντυχόντο[ς τ]ῷ κρατί-
στῳ δι[οι-] / κητῇ Αὐρ̣ ηλίῳ Πτολεμα[ί]ῳ ἐπὶ τῷ ἄπ[ορ]ον̣ ̣ / ὄντα⟦ς⟧
δεδόσθαι εἰς πρεσ̣ ̣ β̣[υτε]ρείαν … (‘when Orsenouphis, son of
Orsenouphis, petitioned the most honourable dioiketes Aurelius
Ptolemaeus about his nomination to the council of elders
despite his being without means …’, P. Leit. 5.20–3). Elders, the
πρεσβύτεροι, performed a range of functions mostly centred on
agriculture and irrigation such as storage of grain, organisation
of canal work, collection of dues, etc. They also frequently ��lled
in as village clerks, see Tomsin (1952); Derda (2006) 168–76. It
took probably a person of higher status, such as a prytanis (as in
P. Oxy. 14.1662 (17 July 246)) to act as ambassador on behalf of a
city before a central authority.
33 Wilkinson (2012a) 158.
34 Here, I prefer the MS reading (Paton (1999b) 52 prints
βραχυμόχθου).
35 Wilkinson (2012a) 159–60 also sees in this couplet a reference to
the city council; so too Cameron (1965b) 28, who interprets the
poem as a kind of swan song for the pagan cause, as does Bowra
(1959) 267, even if the latter does not ��nd in βουλευτής (v. 2) a
reference to a city councillor. The expression ‘a pound of years’
is generally thought to refer to the number of solidi in a pound
of gold, see bibliography in Wilkinson (2009) 40 n. 21. From
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Rodney Ast
implies that the speaker, a grammarian, has spent his life-
time in the service of the local elite, whom he probably
educated and supported with his skills as a writer and
probably a rhetorician. He is in this respect not unlike
other teachers of the period.36 The poet apparently jokes
that his burdensome responsibility to this municipal body
would somehow accompany him to the grave. His stance
hints at the complex relationship between the composer
of this kind of political satire and the municipal environ-
ment that he called home. This environment is what fur-
nished him with much of the subject matter for his skoptic
poetry. Returning now to the ‘Sauromates epigram’, let us
explore this subject matter in greater detail.
2 The Name Game
The target of the ‘Sauromates epigram’ is a ‘Sauromatian’.
By ri���ng on the subject’s Sarmatian ethnos (26 W p. 11,
ll. 29 and 35),37 the poet exploits the same skoptic strat-
egy observed in the epigram on the corrupt o���cial from
Chalkis quoted above (Pall. AP 11.283), and this strategy
is observed elsewhere in the codex. For example, in 7 W
(p. 5, ll. 10–14), Hermaios, who hails from Hermes’ city of
Hermopolis, is taken to task for his adulterous ways. And
in the verses that follow (8 W p. 5, ll. 15–25) Neilos, also
from Hermopolis and apparently a criminal, is perhaps
Constantine onwards, this number was 72 solidi (hence the
belief that the poet is talking about his 72 years), 1/72 of a pound
being the established weight, but it is perhaps worth noting that
under Diocletian the weight was 1/60 of a pound; for discus-
sion of the change in weight, see Bagnall (2009) 191. At any rate,
AP 10.97 is similar to 24W (p. 10, ll. 24–9) in its handling of the
combined themes of money and journeys to the Underworld.
36 One is reminded of Libanios, whose relationship with members
of the city council at Antioch was sometimes fraught. We see
this, for example, in Or. 31, To the Antiochenes for the Teachers of
Rhetoric (360/1), Or. 35, To Those Who Do Not Speak (388), and Or.
48, To the City Council (fourth quarter of the 4th century), which
touch on such themes as the loss of educated provincial youths
to careers in the imperial administration rather than in munici-
pal o���ces; the trend for city councillors not to make good use of
their rhetorical education; the need for teaching assistants to be
supported by the city; the contravention of laws forbidding the
sale of curial properties to non-council members. See Malosse
(2014) 90–2; Bradbury (2014) 229; Ast (2015).
37 Sarmatian ethnicity/-ties are notoriously di���cult to de��ne. For
insight into the problem, see Dan (2017). What she says on p. 112
about the ancient historian applies equally, if not more, to the
ancient poet: ‘When using ethnicities, ancient historians – and
presumably also political and military chiefs as well as their
public – were expressing rough identities, and they were aware
of this’.
A Sarmatian Family of Mediocre Prytaneis
contrasted with the river/god Nile.38 Finally, in another
epigram for Neilos (ἄ�ο εἰς Νε̣ ̣ῖ[̣ λον]; 9 W p. 5, ll. 26–8),
there may be a play on the man’s name and the river/
god Nile, as the poem opens with the suggestive state-
ment ἀμφοτέροις ὄνομ᾿ ἐσ̣ τὶ (‘for both exists the name …’).39
Given these examples, it is not surprising to ��nd the poet
playing on a name in the ‘Sauromates epigram’.
That the ethnic origin of the Sarmatian in the
‘Sauromates epigram’ is important to the satire is obvious,
but one might also wonder if this Sarmatian was actually
named ‘Sarmates’ (an ethnonym meaning ‘a man from
Sarmatia’), and if the joke turned on a correlation between
the name and the ethnic. The name Sarmates turns up in
many documents from Egypt written between the 3rd
and the 6th century.40 The ��rst secure attestation of it
is in a papyrus dating to 184/5, a fragmentary Panopolite
contract dealing with a division of land (CPR 17b.1.29) in
which the Sarmates alluded to may be a pre-Antonine
Aurelius (the editors restore Αὐρηλ]ίου Σαρμάτου
Τυραννίου).41 From the 3rd century, the name occurs all
over Egypt, from Hermopolis to Oxyrhynchus to various
locations in the Arsinoite nome and the Great Oasis.42
The latest secure attestation is in P. Köln 3.158.12, a con-
tract of loan from Herakleopolis dating to the end of the
6th century (18 Oct. 599). During this four-hundred-year
period, we encounter more than 100 individuals who bear
the name. Of special interest is the Sarmates who appears
in a 3rd-century letter found at Oxyrhynchus, i.e. P. Oxy.
17.2150. The back of the papyrus preserves the address:
ἀπ(όδος) εἰς τὴν οἰκ(ίαν) Σαρμάτ(ου) πρυτανεύσ(αντος)
π(αρὰ) Διδύμου (‘deliver to the house of the former council
head (prytanis) Sarmates, from Didymos’). I am not sug-
gesting that this particular Sarmates has anything to do
with the council chairman of the ‘Sauromates epigram’,
only make the point that this document o�fers proof of at
least one head of a city council named Sarmates.43
The historical circumstances behind the abrupt
appearance of the name Sarmates in Egypt around the
beginning of the 3rd century have not, as far as I know,
been examined, nor is this the place to conduct such an
examination. Interestingly, the sudden occurrence of the
38 Wilkinson (2012a) 138–9. On this epigram, see Kanellou/Carey in
this volume pp. 10–13.
39 Wilkinson (2012a) 139–40. On this epigram, see Kanellou/Carey
in this volume pp. 13–14.
40 See too Colombo (2021) 86–7.
41 See P. J. Sijpesteijn’s comments at CPR 17b.1.29n.
42 For these occurrences, which are too many to be listed here, see
Trismegistos People: www.trismegistos.org/namevariant/4356;
cf. also http://www.trismegistos.org/place/7069.
43 Other curiales bearing this name are gathered by Colombo
(2021) 87.
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71
name is not paralleled elsewhere in the Roman Empire,
but this may be due to the absence of comparable every-
day texts surviving from places outside Egypt.44 The more
general topic of Sarmatian migration has, by contrast,
been the subject of numerous studies.45 While I would not
insist that the Sarmatian in the ‘Sauromates epigram’ was
a man named Sarmates, the ubiquity of the name coupled
with the poet’s habit of punning on names makes it quite
possible. Moreover, the frequent occurrence of the name
in Egypt suggests there was a large pool of ‘Sarmatians’ to
target. And one last point, about the spelling: although
Σαρμάτης is the orthographical rule in texts from Egypt,
it does not work metrically in 26 W; Σαυρομάτης, however,
does.46
3 Sailing to ‘India’
Our Sarmatian sailed to the Indians (l. 30), and with Ἰνδούς
the poet could be referring to either India or Africa.47
According to the editor, ε̣ἰ[̣ ς] Ἰνδούς ποτε πλεύσας refers
to Galerius’ campaign in Egypt in 294/5, during which he
is thought to have fought the Blemmyes south of the ��rst
cataract.48 Εἰ̣ [̣ ς] Ἰνδούς ποτε πλεύσας would be a grand way
44 After Egypt, the next best source of documents mentioning the
name is, unsurprisingly, the Kimmerian Bosporos; see LGPN IV
ad Σαρμάτας and Σαυρομάτης, the latter referring exclusively,
it seems, to the line of Bosporan kings with the name Tiberius
Julius Sauromates.
45 See Dan (2017) who cautions against simplistic views of
Sarmatian migration patterns and ethnicity, which she sees as a
Greek and Roman construct.
46 Dan (2017) 114–15 talks about the tendency among modern
historians and some ancient authors to con��ate, whether
rightly or wrongly, the designations Sauromatian, Sarmatian,
and Syrmatian (e.g. Pliny the Elder says in HN 4.80 that the
Sarmatians were called Sauromatians by the Greeks); while
no explicit justi��cation exists for doing this, clear distinctions
among the terms are similarly lacking.
47 See Schneider (2004), esp. 23–35, and (2015) for a discussion
of the extension westwards of the geographical designation
embodied by the term ‘India’, and the fact that, particularly from
the 3rd century CE onwards, the term ‘Indian’ could also refer to
Ethiopians, Axumites, etc.
48 Wilkinson (2012a) 164–5, (2012b) 43–4, and (2015b) 90–1. In
(2012a) 164, he argues that ‘Greek and Latin authors used the
term “Indians” to refer, not only to residents of the Indian sub-
continent, but also to people living south of Egypt or in the
Eastern Desert between the Nile and the Red Sea’. While it is
true that India could denote Ethiopia and other parts of east-
ern Africa located on the Indian Ocean, it likely did not refer to
Egypt’s Eastern Desert, if by Eastern Desert we understand the
area served by the roads connecting Koptos with the harbours
of Myos Hormos and Berenike. There is a lot of bibliography
on the subject of the Eastern Desert to which one could refer,
72
to describe sailing up the Nile, but this is poetry and we
can admit some poetic licence. There is nothing, however,
in the expression that necessarily entails military cam-
paigning, and what is more, mobility was not limited to
emperors and soldiers. The poet could easily be alluding
to a merchant or even a member of the local elite, two
classes of individuals involved in Eastern trade, which
is known to have extended via the Red Sea and over the
Indian Ocean as far as India. For instance, a city council-
lor (βουλευτής), whose epithet [ἐ]ρυθραικός suggests that
he participated in some way in the Red Sea trade, set up
a dedicatory inscription at Koptos (modern Quft) around
the year 260 CE (I. Portes 90); details of the man are unclear
due to the fragmentary state of the dedication.49 Similarly,
two dedicatory inscriptions from the year 209, which were
found during excavations conducted in 2015 and 2018 at
the Red Sea harbour of Berenike, were commissioned by a
city councillor (βουλευτής) from Koptos.50 This councillor
obviously had commercial interests in the Eastern trade
routes; there would have been no other reason for him
to set up the monuments at the port. Where exactly his
interests took him is impossible to say, but they could eas-
ily have led him or his agents to India, whether this India
was the same as what we call India, or was Ethiopia, or
some other place on the Indian Ocean side of the African
continent.51 Given such evidence for the involvement of
thanks to extensive recent excavations. For general treatment
of the region, see e.g. Cuvigny (2003); Sidebotham (2011). Some
of the thousands of Greek texts, mainly ostraca, found over
the past several decades have been published in the volumes
O. Claud. 1–4, O. Did., O. Krok. 1–2. Berenike texts are available in
O. Berenike 1–3; most of them date to the 1st and 2nd century, a
smaller number to the 3rd century and later (O. Berenike 3.272,
a fragmentary papyrus, may be as late as the 5th century). Very
recent ��nds from the port con��rm that the Blemmyes occu-
pied it in the late 4th and early 5th century; see Ast/Rądkowska
(2020).
49 I thank Federico de Romanis for pointing out this inscription to
me and for his kind advice.
50 The inscriptions, which are in Greek and still unpublished, were
found along with other dedications in the forecourt of Berenike’s
central Temple of Isis. For a recent report on these activities, see
Sidebotham et al. (2019).
51 A further 5th/6th-century inscription (SB 22.15373 = SEG
44.1435), which was found in 1993 at the northern Red Sea
coastal site of Abu Sha’ar, refers to an indicopleustes (‘one who
travels to India’) named Andreas. Although the extant text does
not associate him with a local administrative o���ce, Andreas
probably had commercial interests in ‘India’, which the editors
of the inscription identify with Ethiopia; see Bagnall/Sheridan
(1994) 112. A couple of 4th-century papyri from Oxyrhynchus
mention a tax for the ‘sailors of India’ (SB 5.7756.17–18, Sept. 27,
359; P. Oxy. 48.3408.17–18, 4th century); see Gascou (2018) 8–14
for discussion of the late antique evidence for trade between
Egypt and the East.
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Rodney Ast
city o���cials in trade with India, it is not at all far-fetched to
think that the epigram in the Yale papyrus codex refers to
travel conducted or sponsored by a member of the munic-
ipal elite, or even by somebody who became a member of
the elite after travelling to India, which had the potential
to be a very lucrative undertaking. I should mention, too,
that in the De prosodia catholica (On prosody in general),
which survives in fragments and epitomes harking back to
Herodian,52 in a section describing masculine names end-
ing in -της, ‘Sauromates’ is de��ned as an ‘Indian ethnos’:
Ἰαζαβάτης ἔθνος παρὰ Μαιῶτιν, οὓς Σαυρομάτας φησὶν
Ἔφορος. Σαρμάτης ἔθνος Σκυθικόν, Σαυρομάτης ἔθνος
Ἰνδικόν.
The Iazabates nation lies along the Maiotis (i.e. the Sea
of Azov), and Ephoros calls the people there Sauromatas.
The Sarmates nation is Skythian, while the Sauromates
nation is Indian.
GG III, I 1, 72
What, if anything, this could have to do with our epigram,
I am unsure (this is the messiness referred to at the begin-
ning of this chapter), but perhaps in the poet’s mind his
‘Sauromatian’ was at home sailing around ‘India’. I should
caution, though, that the location and conception of India
and the Indian are similar to that of Sarmatia and the
Sarmatian: they are so confused in ancient sources that
one can ��nd ‘evidence’ to support almost any claim.53
4 Conclusion
The Sarmatian of the Yale papyrus codex served as the
head of the city council (prytanis) twice and was heir to
a man who also served twice, but it is in the last two lines
that we get the brunt of the joke, which depends on a pun.
Despite being ‘a Sauromatian’, the man in question was
not a ‘fourfold Sauromates’, even if he and his father were
city chiefs a total of four times. The joke surely turns on
the Sarmatian ethnicity rather than on the prytanis title.
But what does it mean to be a ‘fourfold Sauromates’? Alan
Cameron admits that he has no idea what it means.54 I
have argued elsewhere that it could be an allusion to
imperial titulature, as the editor’s interpretation entails,55
52 For a brief description of the surviving witnesses and original
composition of this treatise, see Dickey (2014) 334–5.
53 See n. 46 in this chapter.
54 Cameron (2016a) 52.
55 Ast (2014).
A Sarmatian Family of Mediocre Prytaneis
and I would add that any literate city councillor would
have been acquainted with how this titulature was for-
mulated from his dealings with dated documents. On this
interpretation, the ��nal couplet could mean that even if
we added up the target’s and his father’s four stints as pry-
taneis, they would not have made this municipal leader,
whose name could even have been Sarmates, some-
one of the status of an emperor who bore a Sarmaticus
title. The basis for the comparison would have been the
analogous name, not any military achievements. But, as
Cameron observes, there is a fundamental problem with
understanding Σ̣α̣υρ̣ ̣ομάτ̣ην̣ ̣ [τ]ετραπλῇ{ν} as Sarmaticus
IV because there is no good reason for the poet to write
Σαυρομάτην instead of the actual victory title Σαρματικόν,
if the victory title was meant.56 If Cameron’s caution is
warranted, one should perhaps look for an explanation
that accounts for the term ‘Sauromates’.
The name Sauromates is reminiscent, ��rst and fore-
most, of the line of Bosporan kings Tiberius Julius
56 Cameron (2016a) 51.
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73
Sauromates I–IV.57 Unfortunately, very little information
survives on the later two kings who bore this name. For
instance, about Sauromates IV we only know that he
died around 275/6.58 Whether the ‘fourfold Sauromates’
referred in some way to one of them is impossible to say.
My purpose in mentioning them is simply to suggest that
the key to understanding the last line of the epigram may
depend on something outside our immediate frame of ref-
erence that is either no longer available to us or has been
so obscured that we cannot see the connection (this is the
messiness again). Regardless of this and whatever the last
line is meant to invoke, be it imperial titulature or some-
thing more ethnically Sarmatian, the basic point seems to
be that a member of this ‘foreign’ (i.e. Sarmatian) family,
despite his inherited membership in the bouleutic class,
was not the hotshot he imagined himself to be.
57 Cf. n. 44 in this chapter.
58 This is deduced from numismatic evidence. See Gajdukevič
(1971) 470 and 574 (on Sauromates IV); cf. Gajdukevič (1971) 357–
8, 459, 474, and 574 (on Sauromates III).