Select Papyri
XIV. Correspondence
409. About The Gold Coinage Of Ptolemy Philadelphus
P. Cairo Zen. 59021.258 b.c.
1Ἀπολ[λων]ίωι χαίρειν Δημήτριος. 2καλῶς ἔχει
εἰ αὐτός τε ἔρρωσαι καὶ 3τἄλλα σοι κατὰ γνώμην
ἐστίν. 4καὶ ἐγὼ δὲ καθάπερ μοι ἔγραψας 5προσέχειν
ποιῶ αὐτὸ καὶ δέδεγμαι 6ἐκ χρ(υσίου) 
᾿Ζ καὶ κατεργασάμενος 7ἀπέδωκα. ἐδεξάμεθα δ᾿ ἂν
καὶ 8πολλαπλάσιον, ἀλλὰ καθά σοι καὶ 9πρότερον
ἔγραψα ὅτι οἵ τε ξένοι 10οἱ εἰσπλέοντες καὶ οἱ
ἔμποροι καὶ οἱ 11ἐγδοχεῖς καὶ ἄλλοι φέρουσιν τό
τε 12ἐπιχώριο[ν] νόμισμα τὸ ἀκριβὲς καὶ 13τὰ τρίχρυσα
ἵνα καινὸν αὐτοῖς γέ-14νηται κατὰ τὸ πρόσταγμα
ὃ κε-15λεύει ἡμᾶς λαμβάνειν καὶ κ[ατ-
ερ-]16γάζεσ[θα]ι, Φιλαρέτου (?) δέ με οὐκ ἐ-17ῶντος
δέχεσθαι, οὐκ ἔχον[τ]ες ἐ[πὶ] 18τίνα τὴν ἀναφορὰν
- 16Φιλαρέτου δέ Th. Reinach (satisfactory palaeographically): φιάλας τοῦδε Ed.
Correspondence
XIV. Correspondence
409. About the Gold Coinage of Ptolemy Philadelphus
258 b.c.To Apolloniusa greeting from Demetrius.b If you are in good health and your affairs are satisfactory, it is well. As for me, I am attending to the work as you wrote to me to do, and I have received in gold 57000 pieces, which I minted and returned. We might have received many times as much, but as I wrote to you once before, the strangers who come here by sea and the merchants and middlemen and others bring both their local moneyc of unalloyed metal and the gold pentadrachms,d to be made into new money for them in accordance with the decree which orders us to receive and remint, but as Philaretuse does not allow me to accept, not knowing to whom we
- aThe dioecetes.
- bProbably the head of the Alexandrian mint.
- cThat is, money struck in the foreign possessions of the king.
- dGold coins of the nominal value of 3 gold staters or 60 silver drachmae, but actually worth 66⅔. They were now being superseded by a new issue of gold tetradrachms and octadrachms.
- eOwing partly to the condition of the papyrus, the meaning of this passage is obscure. It is difficult to say what sort of gold precisely was being refused by the mint. Perhaps foreign money only, including pentadrachms struck abroad.