This letter is part of a dossier of documents, including RC_19 and RC_20, which record a grant of land in Asia Minor given by Antiochos II to his wife Laodike. The context of the letter is described by J.Muir, "Life and Letters in the Ancient Greek World", pp. 105-107 ( Google Books ).
King Antiochos to Metrophanes, greetings. We have sold to Laodike Pannoukomē and the manor-house and the land belonging to the village, bounded by the land of Zelia and by that of Cyzikos and by the old road which used to run above Pannoukomē, but which has been ploughed up by the neighbouring farmers so that they might take the place for themselves — the present Pannoukomē was formed afterwards — and any hamlets there may be in the land, and the folk who live there with their households and all their property, and with the income of the fifty-ninth year, at a price of thirty talents of silver — so also any of the folk of this village who have moved away into other places — on the terms that she will pay no taxes to the royal treasury and that she will have the right to join the land to any city she wishes; in the same way also any who buy or receive it from her will have the same right and will join it to whatever city they wish unless Laodike has already joined it to a city, in which case they will own the land as part of the territory of the city to which it has been joined by Laodike.
We have given orders to make payment in the treasury at . . . in three instalments, the first in the month Audnaios in the sixtieth year, the second in Xandikos, the third in the following three months. Give orders to convey to Arrhidaios, the manager of Laodike's property, the village and the manor-house and the land belonging to it and the folk with their households and all their property, and to enter the sale in the royal records in Sardes, and to inscribe it on five steles of stone; give orders to erect the first in Ilion in the temple of Athena, the second in the temple at Samothrace, the third in Ephesos in the temple of Artemis, the fourth in Didyma in the temple of Apollo, and the fifth in Sardes in the temple of Artemis; give orders to survey the land immediately and to mark it with boundary stones, and to inscribe the boundaries of the land also on the stele [just mentioned. Farewell. Year 59], the fifth of Dios.
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