Papyrology and Roman History: 1956-1980

The papyri of the Roman Empire have not yet been subjected to the kinds of systematic scholarly enterprises to which the Ptolemaic papyri have been subjected. There is, for example, no comprehensive prosopography comparable to the Prosopographia Ptolemaica, and it is, I think, senseless to start one. What the student of the Roman imperial period has at his disposal is lists of assorted officials, functionaries, and military personnel. Among those compiled in the generation under discussion (1956-1980) there may be mentioned, by way of example, Bureth's collection of imperial titulatures; Mussies' supplement to Henne's 1935 listing of nome strategi; Reinmuth's list of Egypt's prefects; Sijpesteijn's list of gymnasiarchs; Vandoni's list of epistrategi, Bastianini's of the strategi of the Arsinoite nome, and Devijver's of Roman cavalry officers originating from or stationed in Egypt; Cavenaile's and Criniti's lists of Roman soldiers in Egypt. These lists, like so many other efforts in the study of the Roman Egyptian papyri, though retaining their utility for many years, often also seem outdated shortly after if not by the time of their appearance. New papyri provide new names or greater chronological precision; older known texts are revised, their dates are corrected, the names they carry are amended. In a familiar papyrological pastime, "ghost names" are hunted, caught, and deleted from their respective fasti. The process of refinement is endless.