Violence in Roman Egypt. Ari Z. Bryen

judgments and rearrange social relationships as a result of a past violent act. As such, they were political moves in local dramas, both in the sense that they sought to produce a set of actions, and that they sought to change the contours of a certain balance of power. By making this small change in our historical perspective (that is, by moving from a concern about truth in the past to attention to the ways in which petitions produced truths that would shape the future), scribal mediation of the language of violence comes to look less like a problem, and more like an opportunity to understand in greater detail the intricacies of the political and institutional landscape in which petitions were produced.

      Anyone who watches television cop shows knows that the police work with a specific institutional vocabulary. In cop talk, as in Egyptian petitions, there is a relatively limited range of vocabulary used to describe violent occurrences.¹⁶ The language used to describe modern situations is the product of an institutional culture that requires reasonable consistency in describing criminal actions: a police report must use this limited vocabulary to convey details that may eventually have legal repercussions. Thus, while the vocabulary itself is sparse, it is used to convey maximum amounts of information. At the same time, police reports are individualized descriptions of events, designed not only for legal purposes, but also for accurate reporting back to a community in the form of crime statistics and police blotters in local newspapers. Because of this, the language must both be a roughly accurate legalistic translation of the “facts” of the event and also be specific enough that quantifiable patterns can be extracted. While it would be silly to claim that in Egypt there was a desire on the part of the government to extract specific data on this aspect of local life, the comparison is still instructive: petitions were the product of a legal tradition, and as such are relatively consistent in their language. Complainants sought to get their point across to authorities forcefully; they used specific language that was laden with meaning to do this. But this does not mean that petitions were merely forms to be filled out. Descriptions of violence had to resonate with a body of institutional presumptions to the degree that they had to be recognized as complaining about violence in order to start institutional processes in motion in the first place. But they also had to tell a particular form of story, and that story had to be individualized.

      It is worth arguing from example. The following two petitions come from the Kronion archive from Tebtynis. Both are from the year A.D. 48, both are addressed to the strategos Apollonios, and both are written in what appears to be the same hand. The first dates to the fifth of January, the second to the fifth of February. Furthermore, in both petitions, the name of the assailant, Patynion, is the same (though his patronymic is subtly different). These two documents are the most similar examples that I have found in the petitions about violence. Unlike other documents I discuss in the text, I have printed the papyri below to reflect the original layout of the documents, and preserved the original spellings of the words:¹⁷

      Ἀπολλωνίῳ στρατηγῷ Ἀρσινοείτου

      παρὰ Πετσίριος τοῦ Φουλήμι-

      ος τῶν ἀπὸ Ταλεὶ τῇ ε τοῦ

      Τῦβι τοῦ ἐνοστῶτος η̣ [ἔτους]

      Τιβερίου Κλαυδίου Καίσαρος

      Σεβαστοῦ Γερμανικοῦ

      Αὐτοκράτορος. ἐμοῦ ὄντος

      ἐργασζομένου ἐν ᾧ μεμίσ-

      θωμε παρὰ Ἰσχυρίωνος

      τοῦ Πτολεμαίου περὶ Ταλὶ

      ἀμπελῶνος, εὗρον ἐπʼ αὐ-

      τοφώ̣ρωι Πατυνίωνα

      Ἡρακλίδου καὶ τὸν τούτου

      ὑ̣ε[̣ ιὸ]ν [̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣]̣ ̣ ̣ἐλ̣ άνον-

      τας ̣ ἡ̣μ̣ιένους δη̣[ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣]̣ ̣ ̣

      ἐν τοῖς παρεσπαρμένοις

      λαχάνοις καὶ ἐμοῦ λογο-

      πυουμένου πρὸς αὐτοὺς

      καὶ ὕββριν μοι ἐπεταίλε-

      σαν οὐ τὴν τοιχοῦσαν ἔτι

      δὲ καὶ ἐκ τοῦ τοιούτου ἔδο-

      κάν μοι ἀφιδέστερα πληγὰς

      πλήρους εἰς τὰ παρατυχό-

      ντα μέρη τοῦ σώματος

      κ̣α̣ὶ ̣π̣ρ̣ο̣[σέ]π̣α̣ισ̣ ο̣ ̣μ μοι εἰς τὴν

      πλευρὰν το̣ ῖ̣ [̣ ς] γρόνθοις

      ὥσται νῦν κατακλεινην εἶ-

      να̣ ι κα̣ὶ ̣κ̣ιν̣ δυ̣νεύ̣ ̣ει̣ ν̣ ̣ τῷ̣

      ζῆν. διὼ ἀξι̣ῶ̣ι̣ γ̣ρ̣ά̣ψ̣α̣ι̣

      τῷ․ τῆς Ταλεὶ ἀρχεφώδῳ

      ἐκπέμψε τοὺς ἐνκαλου-

      μέν[ο]υς ἐπὶ σαὶ πρὸς τὴν ἐ-

      σομένην ἐπέξοδον.

      εὐτύχι.

      (The date, name, and description of the petitioner follow)

      To Apollonios, strategos of the Arsinoite nome, From Petsiris son of Phoulemis, one of those from Talei. On the 5th of Tubi of the present 8th year of Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus Imperator, while I was working in the vineyard that I rent from Ischyrion, son of Ptolemaios, in Talei, I myself saw Patynion son of Herakleides and his son … leading mules … in the vegetable patches. I had a discussion with them and they did inappropriate violence to me, and what’s more, they beat me unsparingly with many blows all over my body. They laid into my side with their fists, so now I am laid up and in danger of losing my life. Therefore I ask you to write to the archephodos of Talei to send the accused to you for forthcoming punishment. Farewell.

      Ἀπολλωνίῳ στρατηγῷ Ἀρσινοείτ(ου)

      παρὰ Παποντῶτος τοῦ Παποντῶτο(ς)

      τῶν ἀπὸ Ταλὶ τῆς Πολέμωνος με-

      ρίδος λεγο(μένου) Ψεναμτῖτο(ς) γεοργοῦ

      τῶν ἀπὸ Ταλεὶ τῆς αὐτῆς μερίδος.

      ἐπιβάλλον(τός) τινος λῃστρικῷ τρόπο

      εἰς ἣν ἐχο ἐν προγεγραμμένῃ κό-

      μῃ Ταλὶ οἰκίαν καὶ ἤρωσάν μου

      δοκοὺς δέκα καὶ ὅλμον, καὶ ἐ-

      μοῦ τὴν ἀναζήτησιν πυουμέ-

      νου σὺν τῷ τῆς κώμης Ταλεὶ ἐ-

      πιστάτῃ εὗρον ἀπʼ αὐτοφώρωι

      ἐν