An Augustan Document Recovered

Abstract

Since its publication in 1930 by G. Vitelli and M. Norsa (Bull, de la Soc. roy. d'Alexandrie n.s. VII, 1930, 9 ff.) the text conveniently known as the ‘Boule’ papyrus, or (to give it the serial number under which it was republished) PSI 1160 (x, 1932), has been the centre of a furious controversy. Is the text an official document from the Egyptian archives, or is it non-documentary, whether that means ’rhetorical exercise’, suasoria, or semi-fictional narrative ? H. A. Musurillo's admirable collection The Acts of the Pagan Martyrs (Oxford, 1954) sums up present views and excuses me from giving a bibliography.One important piece of evidence has, however, been strangely neglected, namely the language of the text. It can, I think, be demonstrated that PSI 1160 is a Greek translation of a Latin original. The decisive point is the grammatical form of the sentences in col. 11, in which φημὶ ταύτην φροντιεῖν ἴνα μὴ beginning in line 1 continues to govern subjunctives down to the end of line 14. A total of seven finite verbs in the subjunctive occur in these lines, all owing their mood to this introductory phrase, a phrase never repeated or reinforced even though there are two breaks of sense sufficiently distinct for Musurillo to mark one with a colon, and one with a full stop.