Title(s):
- Patria of Antinoopolis
Period covered:
130-286?
Language:
Greek
State of Preservation:
Partial
Genre:
- Poetry (epic panegyric)
- Secular history (patria)
Remarks:
The first 17 verses describe the death of Antinoos and the foundation of Antinoopolis by Emperor Adrian. After this section we find a small horizontal line, which opens the second part of our text, dedicated to the Egyptian visit of Diocletian. The name of a minister, Diogenes, allows us to date this journey between 285 and 286. Only the first work regards us here, which was a Patria of Antinopolis.
E. Livrea wrote twice about this text. He initially supposed that the first half of it belonged to Soterichos' Patria, the second one to his encomium of Diocletian (1999: 69-73). Next, he assigned both parts to the encomion. Livrea extends the idea to another famous papyrus, P. Strasburg 481: in his view, it is part of the same work (2002: 17-30). Livrea's hypothesis is problematic. As Janiszewski (2006: 232-235) observes, he does not consider the horizontal line after the 17th verse, which is used to divide two different texts.
The two compositions could have been written by a local poet from Oxyrhynchus for two different competitions.
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