Papyri in the Princeton University Collections by Allan Chester Johnson; Sidney PullmanGoodrichReview by: Naphtali LewisThe American Historical Review, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Jul., 1943), p. 767Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1840502 .

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Haskell: This Was Cicero 767

PAPYRI IN THE PRINCETON UNIVERSITY COLLECTIONS. Edited with Notes by Allan Chester Johnson and Sidney Pullman Goodrich. Volume III. [Princeton University Studies in Papyrology, No. 4.] (Princeton: Prince- ton University Press. I942. Pp. Xi, I24. $3.oo.)

THIS volume, which completes the publication of the Princeton papyri, con- tains eighty-four miscellaneous pieces (Nos. io8-9i), all, with one or two possible exceptions, dating from the period of Roman and Byzantine rule in Egypt (30 B.c.-64I A.D.). There are eight or nine literary pieces, including the inevitable Iliad fragments, three scraps from a parchment codex of Xenophon's Hellenica, and a small fragment from Isocrates' Antidosis. The remainder are public and private documents of familiar types (petitions, tax receipts, contracts, letters, etc.), most of them also in more or less fragmentary condition. No. I43, a brief receipt for payment of a debt, is a welcome addition to the small group of extant Latin papyri. The most important of the documents, however, is No. I5I (fourth century), in which one Aurelius Dioscurus offers to rent two female slaves for one year at a rental of six artabs of wheat. The slaves are termed athanatoi, "death- less," which means that if they should die (or, presumably, be lost in any other way) during the term of the lease, the loss would have to be made good by the lessee. Thus far there is nothing extraordinary in the contract; the next clause, however, is unprecedented in the papyri. The editors understand it as providing that any offspring of the slaves born during the period of the lease were to become the property of the lessee instead of the lessor, to whom they would normally be- long under Roman law. It seems to me, however, that the clause in question may mean merely that the lessee was to pay the costs of rearing the offspring during the period of the lease, after which the infants were to return, together with their mothers, to the owner. It is difficult to be certain, because the papyrus breaks off at precisely this crucial point, leaving the text incomplete; but the interpretation here proposed would seem to be more in keeping with the general tenor of the contract as well as with the law.

One or two other documents seem to be of more than immediate importance and may repay further study. The rest will interest only the specialists in papy- rology. It is possible to take issue with the editors on a number of small technical matters, but this is not the place for such details.

New York City NAPHTALI LEwIs

THIS WAS CICERO: MODERN POLITICS IN A ROMAN TOGA. By H. J. Haskell. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf. I942. Pp. Viii, 406, Xiii. $3.50.)

THIS book, written by an experienced editor and reporter, is an excellent popular account of the life of Cicero. The professional scholar, to be sure, will find nothing new in it; yet it is not for that reason unworthy of his attention. The author brings to his task that practical insight into politics which comes from

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