Petitions, Litigation, and Social Control in Roman Egypt

Kelly, Benjamin

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599615.001.0001

Cited by 124 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…It appears that among the petitioners to whom rescripts are addressed there are substantial numbers of sub-elite people. 48 However, many of these cases of more humble people petitioning emperors were probably the product of imperial mobility, as we have seen for Hadrian. 49 The rescripts that appear in the Codex Hermogenianus, for instance, result to a large extent from Diocletian's travels in the lower Danube provinces.…”

Section: The Legal Emperor: Media and Audiencesmentioning

confidence: 81%

Imperial Justice? The Absence of Images of Roman Emperors in a Legal Role

Hekster¹

2020

The Class. Q.

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Roman emperors were at the pinnacle of society. They were supreme commanders of the armies, the highest priests and the ultimate source of law and justice. These three roles were made clear to the inhabitants of the empire from the reign of Augustus onwards through a variety of media. Public ceremonies showed emperors leaving the city for campaigns, and returning in triumph, at sacrifice, or sitting in judgement. Inscriptions likewise indicated the main roles of emperors through titulature or narrative. The military and the religious leadership of emperors were also made abundantly clear through public monuments and on centrally issued coinage. Yet, throughout Roman imperial history these last two types of source material are surprisingly silent on the emperors’ legal role.

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Section: The Legal Emperor: Media and Audiencesmentioning

confidence: 81%

Imperial Justice? The Absence of Images of Roman Emperors in a Legal Role

Hekster¹

2020

The Class. Q.

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“…47Hauken 1998; Kelly 2011; Koziol 1992, Bisson 2009. Koziol and Bisson document the particular importance of the Carolingian revolution in office for establishing position- and role-specific responsibilities regarding petitions.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recruitment by Petition: American Antislavery, French Protestantism, English Suppression

Carpenter¹

2016

Perspect. polit.

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Why do petitions flourish when they are often denied if not ignored by the sovereigns who receive them? When activists seek to build political organizations in network-rich but information-poor environments, petitioning as institutional technology facilitates recruitment. A petition’s signatory list identifies and locates individuals sympathetic to its prayer and expresses to other citizens who and how many agree with the prayer. Three historical moments—the explosion of antislavery petitioning in the antebellum United States, the emergence of Protestantism in sixteenth-century France, and England’s suppression of petitioning after the Restoration Settlement of 1660—provide vivid demonstrations of the theory. A recruitment-based theory implies that petition drives mobilize as much as they express, that well-established groups and parties petition less frequently, and that the most important readers of a petition are those asked to sign it. The petition’s recruitment function complements, but also transforms, its function of messaging the sovereign. Contemporary digital petitioning both routinizes and takes its force from the petition’s embedded recruitment technology.

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“… 17 This rhetoric may be the product of collaboration between Primigenius and a professional scribe, as happened in Egypt (see Kelly 2011: 41–5), but the exceptional nature of this dedication suggests that the commissioner played an active role in shaping his text.…”

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confidence: 99%

“… 24 Kelly 2011: 41–5 on the role of scribes in formulating petitions in Egypt and Bazzana 2015: 119–63 for the socio-cultural profile of their equivalents in Galilee, including the potential for them to reuse the language acquired in relatively early literate education.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Freedman's Story: an Accusation of Witchcraft in the Social World of Early Imperial Roman Italy (CIL11.4639 =ILS3001)

MacRae

2018

J. Rom. Stud.

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This article proposes a new reading of a late first-century c.e. inscribed dedication from Todi (Umbria) as an accusation of witchcraft, a rhetorical text aimed at propagating a particular story among the local community. Historical and anthropological studies of witchcraft accusations in other societies have emphasised how they can reveal tensions and anxieties that are normally not visible to the observer. By drawing on these studies and close examination of the language and content of the inscription, this article analyses an historical agent's experience of the social structure of early imperial Italy. The accusation is read as a freedman's response to his ambiguous position in a slave society, the ambivalent power of writing in Roman culture and the religious claims of Flavian imperial discourse.

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Petitions, Litigation, and Social Control in Roman Egypt

Cited by 124 publications

References 0 publications

Imperial Justice? The Absence of Images of Roman Emperors in a Legal Role

Imperial Justice? The Absence of Images of Roman Emperors in a Legal Role

Recruitment by Petition: American Antislavery, French Protestantism, English Suppression

The Freedman's Story: an Accusation of Witchcraft in the Social World of Early Imperial Roman Italy (CIL11.4639 =ILS3001)

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