One of the Dura parchments (Dura Perg. 23)—a sale of a slave in 180 A.D.—recently transcribed and translated by C. Bradford Welles in his preliminary report on the Dura documents of private character shews a very elaborate and unusual date. First comes the consular date and the name of the emperor, then the date according to the Seleucid era and the month, and finally the place and the municipal date: l. 4 ff. ἐν Εὐρώπῳ τῇ πρὸς ᾿Αραβίᾳ ἐπὶ ἱερέωυ Διὸς μὲν Λυσανίου τοῦ Ζηνοδότου τοῦ ῾Ηλιοδώρου ᾿Απόλλωνος δὲ Θεοδώρου τοῦ ᾿Αθηνοδότου τοῦ ᾿Αρτεμιδώρου, τῶν δὲ προγόνων ῾Ηλιοδώρου τοῦ Διοκλέους τοῦ ῾Ηλιοδώρου, βασιλέως δὲ Σελεύκου Νικ[ά] τορος Δανύμου τοῦ Σελεύκου τοῦ Δανύμου.Dating a document, not only by consuls, the imperial year and the year according to a provincial or municipal era, but also by eponymous priests of the municipal gods was not the common practice at Dura in Roman times. We have now a rather large and representative group of various private documents found at Dura, some of them with the date completely preserved. In no one of them is mention of the eponymous priests found. The date consists of the name of the consuls, the name of the emperor or emperors, and the number of the year according to the Seleucid era. Sometimes when the emperors are themselves consuls the second step is omitted. Nor is such a dating by the priests very common in other parts of the Roman Empire. In contracts or similar documents found in Egypt in most cases the imperial date only is used.