Dear Madam. Your son got pwnt by a scorpion bolt.

[Medicus matt]

I don't have the full text of P.Columbia 325 to hand (and, annoyingly, it's not loaded into APIS yet) but I can give you this from Breeze's "Soldiers' Burial at Camelon" (Britannia Vol.7 1976).

Another document from Egypt dating to 143 is a mother's receipt
for the money, 235 denarii and 14- obols, left by her deceased son, Ammonius,
a soldier in the cohors II Thracum. The total sum includes a depositum of 100
denarii, 21 denarii 27 1/2 obols for weapons, 20 denarii for a tent, and 93 denarii
15 obols for an illegible fourth item.
Ammonius's account was clearly credited
with the value of his arms, tent and so on at his death and this sum together with his savings was paid to his mother, Semphasies. It is difficult to see what else could have been done with the tent, for this was presumably not a whole tent but part of the tent which he shared with the other members of his contubernium.
The recovery of these items by the unit may therefore have been almost automatic, if not compulsory. In his will written in Alexandria and dated 27 March I42 Antonius Silvanus of the ala I Thracum Mauretana stated that he left both his military and his household possessions to his son. These possessions presumably included his weapons and armour, but the clause may have been no more than a legal device to ensure that the heir received the proper monies due to him rather than the goods themselves: in the receipt signed by Semphasies, the mother of Ammonius, his money is described as 'his property collected from the principia'.
The existing documentary evidence all points to the same conclusion: the
soldier bought his own weapons on enlistment and on his death or retirement
they were bought back by his unit. This would account for the appearance of
more than one name on the same piece of military equipment. Macmullen has
listed several items of equipment, helmets, swords, a greave and a chamfron,
all with more than one owner and some having three, four or even five owners.
To this list can now be added a shield-boss with the names of two owners stamped on the rim found in 1968 at Zwammerdam in Germania Inferior.
The recovery by the unit of a soldier's weapons on his death or retirement may have been compulsory. There is no documentary evidence to prove this one
way or the other, though the occasional appearance of weapons in graves
suggests that it was not. Nevertheless the mere existence of this system will have ensured that when a soldier died his equipment normally returned to the arms store.
Where no strong tradition existed of placing the weapons with the soldier
in his grave, his heir or heirs will have been concerned to cash this valuable asset.