The Roman period, sometimes divided into a Roman and a Byzantine section, lasted from 30 BC to AD 640-642. A small number of these survive today. For example the published number of Greek papyri is only about 50,000. There are at least seven times as many still to be published. These are written in calligraphic scripts.
Most texts are strictly documentary.
Among the documentary papyri we find official documents, like edicts of kings, emperors and governors, administrative documents, like tax rolls, tax receipts , census returns and property returns , private documents, like sales , leases , loans, wills, marriage contracts and contracts of apprenticeship, as well as more personal documents, like letters , memoranda, accounts, horoscopes and amulets. Especially the latter class of documents have an intrinsic human interest because of their individual character. All these texts somehow serve to reconstruct ancient civilization at large, its social, economic, political, legal, religious, linguistic and even medical history, from a far more authentic angle than is otherwise possible through the written word. Usually we have only the works of biased classical authors to tell us what their life was like. Even inscriptions on stone tend to be written with posterity in mind.