Amin Benaissa

The epic poet Dionysius, who probably flourished in the first century CE, is a key transitional figure in the history of Greek poetry, sharing stylistic and thematic tendencies with both the learned Hellenistic tradition and the monumental epic poetry of the later Roman period. His Bassarica is the earliest known poem on the conquest of India by the god Dionysus and was an important model of Nonnus' Dionysiaca. His Gigantias related the battle of the giants against the Olympian gods and legends surrounding it, with particular focus on the figure of Heracles. This is the most comprehensive edition to date of his poetry, expanding the number of fragments available and providing a more reliable text based on a fresh inspection of the papyri. The volume includes a substantial introduction contextualising the poetry, a facing English translation of the text, and a detailed linguistic and literary commentary. <www.cambridge.org/9781107178977>

A comprehensive gazetteer of the villages and hamlets of the Oxyrhynchite nome, the administrative region of Graeco-Roman Egypt centred around the city of Oxyrhynchus (modern Al-Bahnasa). It provides a critically compiled list of the papyrological attestations of each settlement and presents in summary form the information recoverable from the papyri about individual villages, such as their relative location, topographical features, religious institutions, and the officials, occupations and important landowners associated with them. This publication will be a useful resource to papyrologists studying and editing Oxyrhynchite documents as well as to scholars interested in the topography and rural society of Graeco-Roman Egypt.

Publication of a papyrus in the British Library preserving a receipt issued by an actuarius of a military unit (probably the Mauri Scutarii in Hermopolis) to a new recruit. The actuarius confirms the receipt of the recruit’s certificate of appointment to the unit (probatoria), which was issued by the dux Thebaidis, and accordingly undertakes to register him in the unit’s muster-roll (matrix). The only parallel to this type of document is P.Münch. I 2 (578). The papyrus also reveals the name of a new dux Thebaidis, Flavius Heracleius Dorotheus Hypsistius Andronicus Celer Zenodotus. He is identifiable with a wealthy honorary consul in the reign of Anastasius mentioned by John Lydus.

introd. p. 526: for a more nuanced and less oppositional characterisation of Greek and Egyptian cultural identities in Roman Egypt, see now J. Rowlandson, "Dissing the Egyptians: legal, ethnic, and cultural identities in Roman Egypt," in A. Gardner et al. (eds.), Creating Ethnicities & Identities in the Roman World (BICS Suppl. 120; London 2013) 213-47.

p. 530 "as shown by tablets shared by different students, e.g. Cribiore 1996a, no. 388": for another interpretation of the different hands on this tablet, see L. Del Corso, "Libri di scuola e sussidi didattici nel mondo antico," in L. Del Corso et O. Pecere (edd.), Libri di scuola e pratiche didattiche dall’Antichità al Rinascimento (Cassino 2010) 83–4.

For a reedition of P.Oxy. 4935 fr. 2, with the addition of a newly identified fragment, see P.Oxy. LXXVIII 5132.

P.Oxy. 4942 col. ii.11 n. (p. 80): the reference to "recentiores" MSS of the scholia on Plato is misleading. The emendation of Σαδὺ ὕδωρ to Βαδὺ ὕδωρ is actually due to Hermann; see R. L. Fowler, Early Greek Mythography. Volume 2: Commentary (Oxford 2013) 280 n. 65. I was not able to consult at the time D. Cufalo's new edition of the scholia on Plato, Scholia graeca in Platonem (Roma 2007).

p. 179: SB XVI 12869 is now re-edited as P.Gen. IV 168. For a possibly related letter, see also P.Gen. IV 169.

pp. 181–3: on the date of CPR XXII 2 (643/4), see now the important discussion by F. Morelli, CPR XXX pp. 22ff. with n. 34, who suggests that the bishop Senuthes appearing there is different from my 'Senuthes II'. As a result, this text should probably be dismissed from my discussion of the chronology of the vicariate of Senuthes and Constantius on pp. 182–3. For recent support of my proposed chronology on the basis of other evidence, see P. Booth, 'Towards the Coptic Church: The Making of the Severan Episcopate', Millennium 14.1 (2017) 151–90, at 180–86.