A Roman soldier's letter to his pregnant sister

Introduction

This letter, O.Flor. 14, was written by a Roman soldier stationed in Egypt at some point in the 2nd century CE.  It was written on a piece of ostracon (pottery) and is owned by the university of Florida.  You can view the full text in Greek here.

In case you are curious, about 28% of recovered documents from ancient Egypt were written on ostracon compared to 65% on papyrus.

The text is largely intact with only one small hole on line 13, which I will mark by "..." in my translation, and another hole at the conclusion, so I did not bother trying to translate the final couple of lines.

Notes

The text contains one Latin word transliterated into Greek, cibariator, which was a merchant boat.  In my translation, I attempted to Anglicise it.
A mation (plural matia) was an Egyptian unit of weight.

Translation

Maximus to Tinarsiegeta his sister, greetings and salutations through everything.  If you come into the days for you to give birth, write me so that I may come and preform your child-birth since I do not know your month.  I proscribed the favour of this to you, so that you may anticipate and write me to enter on the cibariators' ship, and when I stay with you, I will perform your child-birth.  For I offer to you that I will stay with you to give birth.  If you do not send for me, you will do me no gift.  I was going to send you containers for your child-birth; I did not send this favour so that when I come, I can carry two matia of gifts.  The man who carries ostracon to you rolls up ... to me.  Through him, do not be neglectful to write concerning the deposition against your house.  They spoke your name and they did not address.*  So formerly I wrote to your brother so that he may give your name sinesoeistas**.  We kindly welcome you, Kelleas, and all the men in the house according to your name.  Send me leaves as many as to fill a little bucket and I will make it ...

*The Greek of this line is uncertain.  Seriously.  I consulted a professional translation, and they only had an educated guess about a household census.
**Despite my best efforts, this word escapes me and my dictionaries.  In the Greek text, the word is without an accent, which usually indicates that the editor didn't know what it was either.

Comments

By the sounds of things, Maximus was not only a soldier but also a medical doctor and quite keen on presiding over his sister's pregnancy.  This would have been unusual because at that time, the practice was to have three midwives presiding over the labour not a male doctor.

"[C]ontainers for your child-birth" could also be translated "containers for your after-birth" which makes me feel weird, so I opted for the other version.  In searching the ancient medical texts, the Hippocratic writings and Soranus' work on childbirth, I couldn't find any direct references to "child-birth containers," but Soranus talks about needing several jars of olive oil to aid in the birthing process.  Perhaps this is what Maximus was referring to.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments on this text.  I'll try my best to answer any questions either in a comment or as a full post, if the question is juicy enough!