Violence in Roman Egypt. Ari Z. Bryen

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      UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS

      PHILADELPHIA

      Copyright © 2013 University of Pennsylvania Press

      All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes

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      permission from the publisher.

      Published by

      University of Pennsylvania Press

      Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112

       www.upenn.edu/pennpress

      Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

      Bryen, Ari Z.

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Violence in Roman Egypt : a study in legal interpretation / Ari Z. Bryen — 1st ed.

      p. cm. — (Empire and after)

      ISBN 978-0-8122-4508-0

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      1. Criminal procedure (Egyptian law). 2. Criminal procedure (Roman law) 3. Violent crimes—Egypt—History —To 1500. 4. Victims of crimes—Legal status, laws, etc.—Egypt—History—To 1500. 5. Violence—Egypt—History—To 1500. 6. Egypt—History—30 B.C.–640 A.D. I. Title. II. Series: Empire and after.

      KL3085 .B79 2013

      345.32'05 2012041493

       To my parents and my sisters

      CONTENTS

       Introduction: The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life

       Part I. The Texture of the Problem

       Chapter 1. Ptolemaios Complains

       Chapter 2. Violent Egypt

       Chapter 3. Violence, Modern and Ancient

       Part II. From the Language of Pain to the Language of Law

       Chapter 4. Narrating Injury

       Chapter 5. The Work of Law

       Chapter 6. Fission and Fusion

       Conclusion: Nomos and Its Narratives

       Appendix A: The Papyrus on the Page

       Appendix B: Translations of Petitions Concerning Violence

       List of Papyri in Checklist Order

       Notes

       Bibliography

       Index

       Acknowledgments

      Three cases of assault and battery in our city justice courts so far this week are another indication of returned prosperity. Times have been so hard the past few months that when a man got mad at another he would swallow his wrath, go home, and pound his dog. Now that the good times have returned, he gets into a scrap with the cause of his anger and winds up with a round in the justice court.

      —Town Newspaper, Wisconsin, October 1897, cited by Michael Lesy, Wisconsin Death Trip.

      INTRODUCTION

      The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life

      Pain may be a human universal; writing about one’s own pain is not. When historians see individuals transforming pain into narratives that complain about neighbors, local officials, or family members, we would do well to pay attention. These narratives about pain and injury invite a series of questions: What can we learn from the ways that people experience, describe, and complain about violation, pain, and injury? In what ways, and under what circumstances, can we use a narrative about violence to give an account of the ways in which non-elite individuals theorized their own behaviors? In what ways can accounts of pain—and the redemption and socialization of pain through petitions—contribute to a historical account of empires?

      These questions are hardly unique to the ancient world. And they are tricky enough for social historians, especially those of an anthropological bent. They become yet more complex when we have to take into account that, in the Roman world at least, we have our accounts of pain and violation only because they have been mediated through legal structures. СКАЧАТЬ