Petitions and Social History
Petitions and Social History
This chapter examines the methodological challenges that the social historian faces in using petitions from Roman Egypt to write social history. It argues that the use of scribes to produce the documents, and the existence of stock formulae in scribal culture, prevent us from hearing the ‘voices’ of individual petitioners in these documents. It also argues that certain elements of the narratives that these documents present are inherently unreliable, especially: details about offenders and their motivations; details about the circumstances of the wrong; and values assigned to property. On the other hand, details about the genders, civic statuses, occupations, land tenure and domiciles of petitioners are likely to be accurate, as are details about their previous engagements with the justice system. The chronological and geographical distribution of petitions is also discussed.
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