¹ In the everyday language of the Hellenistic period ὀψώνιον replaces the classical μισθός, which continues in literary usage (Launey, M., Recherches sur les armées hellénistiques II (1950), 726Google Scholar). On the other hand, scribes setting up work-contracts nearly always use μισθός instead of ὀψώνιον in my opinion because it was felt to be more solemn (Hengstl, 44 and n. 54 for locatio operarum; 60 for locatio operis).

² The only attestation is O. Claud, inv. 8497.

³ There are no receipts for advance earlier than 136 by which year we may, therefore, believe that the two management systems were established. The latest receipt dates from 197, but the nature of the archaeological contexts makes it impossible to date with confidence entolae other than those found together with receipts from 136–146.

⁴ The uncertainty about the exact number of entolae is due to the existence of related texts (accounts, receipts) which are more or less close to the entolae in form or function.

⁵ There is perhaps an exception: PSI VIII. 962.B.25–39 (A.D. 131/132) is a work-contract through which an inhabitant of a village in the Heracleopolite nome binds himself to assist his employer in μεταλλευτική ἐργασίαἐ for one year. For this he receives 180 drachmae of which 160 are paid in advance. This gives a monthly total of 15 drachmae which is not much, even if one should add various payments in kind specified in a lacuna. But the text presents many uncertainties and we do not know whether the work was full-time, nor whether mining or quarrying was concerned.

⁶ This shows that the ‘high’ wages of 47 and 48 drachmae are not reserved for quarrymen.

⁷ Many different crafts are mentioned in the O.Claud., but they are hardly ever used to distinguish individuals. For this reason we do not know the occupations of our pagani, except for a very few cases where a sklerourgos (quarryman), a stomotes (steel temperer), or a mechanikos (machine operator) are mentioned. The pay of the mechanikos is not known.

⁸ Drexhage, 425–9. I have selected for my calculations only the twenty-two cases which seemed certain.

⁹ Based on Nos 21–4 of the table of market-prices of wheat in Lower and Middle Egypt by Duncan-Jones, R., Structure and Scale in the Roman Economy (1990), 151CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The published texts do not give a trustworthy impression of prices in Upper Egypt (Duncan-Jones, 152), but perhaps it was not so different, in spite of the impression given by certain ostraca concerned with taxation, where it would seem to be much lower. In a unique ostracon from Mons Claudianus (O.Claud, inv. 1077, a letter) there is discussion of a sale of wheat during the reign of Trajan or Hadrian. Two possible prices of two or three staters respectively are mentioned in a somewhat obscure context, i.e. eight or twelve drachmae.

¹⁰ The calculation is easily made on the basis of the data collected by Foxhall, L. and Forbes, H. A., ‘Σιτομετρεία (sic H.C.): the role of grain as a staple food in Classical Antiquity’, Chiron 12 (1982), 41–90Google Scholar.

¹¹ It should be remembered in this connection that taxes were payable in tetradrachms (Gara, 77 and 144).

¹² This, as we shall see below, has been believed by several scholars in treatments of the wages of the Dacian miners.

¹³ There were, of course, holidays, but probably not the same number every month.

¹⁴ Noeske, 398, n. 681.

¹⁵ Gara, 14.

¹⁶ The facsimile in CIL which supports the reading liberisque (cf. n. 5) does, admittedly, not confirm the reading XIIII as made by Röhle (in Acta Musei Napocensis 6 (1969)Google Scholar, a publication to which I do not have access).

¹⁷ Carcopino, J., ‘Note sur la tablette de Cluj CIL III nr X p. 948’, Rev. Philol. 63 (1937), 103Google Scholar.

¹⁸ The problem is whether the facsimile is accurate or if liberis is a wishful reading. A good photograph would disperse the remaining doubts, but those I have seen are, unfortunately, not of an adequate quality (Inscriptiones Daciae Romanae I (1965), 234Google Scholar; Apulum 7 (1968), 324Google Scholar). Röhle claims to have seen ‘klar und deutlich die Buchstaben liberisque’ on a photograph which has been sent to him (Rohle 1968, 189). Besides Noeske, , Kaser, M., Das römische Privatrecht I ² (1971), 570Google Scholar, n. 72, also accepts the reading liberisque, which, on the other hand, is rejected by Kloft, H., ‘Arbeit und Arbeitsverträge in der griechisch-römischen Welt’, Saeculum 35 (1984), 215Google Scholar, n. 75, although not on palaeographical grounds. I. I. Russu, Inscriptiones Daciae Romanae 1.1.41, does not choose between the two.

¹⁹ Mrozek 1968, 318: on the basis of TC XI, ‘We can calculate that the annual pay of a minor was 210 denarii or 2.3 sesterces or more than 9 asses a day’. Mrozek 1977, 104: ‘der jährliche Verdienst des Restitutus agnomine Senioris betrug also 210 Denare, was pro Tag ungefähr 2,3 Sesterzen ausmacht’; Noeske, 402: ‘wenn Memmius Asclepi für ein halbes Jahr Arbeit im Bergwerk 70 Denare verdient…’

²⁰ Thus put by Domergue, 345.

²¹ In the Lex Ursonensis (Spain, first century A.D.) the annual remuneration (annua) of the municipal employees is a multiple of the aureus (= 25 denarii), see CIL II Suppl. 5439, ch. 62 and the comment by Mrozek 1975, 75–6.

²² This is not normally the case for the yearly wages in Egypt as listed by Drexhage, 430. Only in one case out of twelve is the amount divisible by twelve, but on the other hand it is nearly always divisible by four.

²³ I have wondered whether the wages of 37 drachmae 4 obols could be calculated on the same basis as the daily payment of 5 asses, attested in CIL IV Suppl. 4000 (Pompeii, ante A.D. 79). The inscription is quoted e.g. by Krenkel, W., ‘Währungen, Preise und Löhne in Rom’, Das Altertum 7 (1961), 167–78Google Scholar, at 175 (non vidi, reference taken from Szilagyi, J., ‘Prices and wages in the western provinces of the Roman Empire’, Acta Antigua II (1963), 325–89Google Scholar, at 347). At this rate the payment for thirty days would indeed be 37 sestertii and 2 asses, or at the statutory exchange-rate, 37 drachmae and 3.5 obols. But this is surely a co-incidence, since we have seen that the daily rates were used for irregular and temporary employment and were not used as a basis for the wages of permanent personnel.

²⁴ An annual rate of 114 denarii would mean a monthly payment of 38 drachmae, which sum is sporadically attested on Mons Claudianus (see above, p. 141).

²⁵ This solution supposes that drachmae of 6 and 7 obols, respectively, are used in the same operation. This could be awkward, but is not without parallel: in P. Cair. Mich. 359, Part II, p. 14, n. 10, Shelton quotes P. Lond. 1.131 (corr. in BL 1, p. 230), where 85 drachmae 2 obols of bronze are converted into 71 drachmae 1 obol of silver, at a rate of 29 obols for 4 drachmae. As Shelton notes, although the 85 drachmae have been converted at the announced rate into 17 tetradrachms, the last 19 obols were converted into 3 drachmae 1 obol calculating 6 obols to the drachma. Since the 6-obol drachma was better suited to the Egyptian monetary system than that of 7 obols, accountants must have been tempted to use it (Gara, 71, n. 47).

²⁶ The miners were not employed for a round number of months and it is not known at what intervals they were paid. The contracts use the vague per tempora, for which see Noeske, 399, 401. At Mons Claudianus workers were apparently paid at the end of each month, as was usual for everyone who was paid by the month.

²⁷ Mons Claudianus is under direct administration: the workers let their service to the emperor, represented by his procurator. The mines at Alburnus Maior were under indirect administration: the imperial procurator lets the mine shafts to private entrepreneurs who hire and pay the workers (Domergue, 301–5).

²⁸ Perhaps a tabularium dependant on the procurator a rationibus, see Dušanić, S., ‘The Roman Mines of Illyricum: Organization and Impact on Provincial Life’, Mineria e metalurgia en las antiguas civilizaciones mediterraneas y europeas 11 (1989), 154–5Google Scholar.

²⁹ Noeske, 402; Mrozek 1989, 166.

³⁰ Corbier, M., ‘Salaires et salariat sous le Haut-Empire’, Les Dévaluations à Rome 2 (1980), 81Google Scholar. The locus classicus in this connection is Dig. XXXVIII.1.50.1 (thus Mrozek 1977, 105): ‘Non solum autem libertum, sed et quemlibet alium operas edentem alendum: aut satis temporis ad quaestum alimentorum relinquendum: et in omnibus tempora ad curam corporis necessaria relinquenda’ (‘But not only the freedman, but anyone else engaged in performing services, is to be provided with food, or to be allowed sufficient time to earn the price of his food, and all are to be left time to take necessary care of themselves’, trans. A. Watson, The Digest of Justinian (1985)). The argument is open to discussion, firstly because the passage does not concern paid work, but the rather special case of free services; secondly rations may be of different sizes, as we have seen for the pagani and the familia at Mons Claudianus and, furthermore, in the Egyptian work-contracts the description of payment in kind is never less precise than that of the payment in money (cf. the numerous examples collected and analysed by Hengstl, passim).