1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910463511103321

Autore

Bryen Ari Z

Titolo

Violence in Roman Egypt [[electronic resource] ] : a study in legal interpretation / / Ari Z. Bryen

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia, : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2013

ISBN

0-8122-0821-8

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (374 p.)

Collana

Empire and After

Disciplina

296.09/014

Soggetti

Criminal procedure (Egyptian law)

Criminal procedure (Roman law)

Violent crimes - Egypt - History - To 1500

Victims of crimes - Legal status, laws, etc - Egypt - History - To 1500

Violence - Egypt - History - To 1500

Electronic books.

Egypt History 30 B.C.-640 A.D

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- 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. Fusion and Fission -- Conclusion. Nomos and Its Narratives -- Appendix A : The Papyrus on the Page -- Appendix B:Translations of Petitions Concerning Violence -- Papyri in Checklist Order -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments

Sommario/riassunto

What can we learn about the world of an ancient empire from the ways that people complain when they feel that they have been violated? What role did law play in people's lives? And what did they expect their government to do for them when they felt harmed and helpless? If ancient historians have frequently written about nonelite people as if they were undifferentiated and interchangeable, Ari Z. Bryen counters by drawing on one of our few sources of personal narratives from the



Roman world: over a hundred papyrus petitions, submitted to local and imperial officials, in which individuals from the Egyptian countryside sought redress for acts of violence committed against them. By assembling these long-neglected materials (also translated as an appendix to the book) and putting them in conversation with contemporary perspectives from legal anthropology and social theory, Bryen shows how legal stories were used to work out relations of deference within local communities. Rather than a simple force of imperial power, an open legal system allowed petitioners to define their relationships with their local adversaries while contributing to the body of rules and expectations by which they would live in the future. In so doing, these Egyptian petitioners contributed to the creation of Roman imperial order more generally.