Lives behind the Laws: The World of the Codex Hermogenianus

Notes

207 Notes Preface & Acknowledgments 1. Honoré, Severan Lawyers, 164. 2. Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 9. Augustine’s description of his father is found in Conf. II, iii, 5. 3. Crook, “Review of E. Champlin,” 233. 4. Ibid., 233–3 4. Millar, Crowd in Rome, 203, states that the “middle class” at Rome could be defined as having a minimum of 10percent of the wealth required of equites and 5 percent of that required of senators. 5. Purcell, “Way We Used to Eat,” 339. 6. Education for most children was until about the age of eleven: Marrou, History of Education, 359 nn. 3–4, referring to Suet. Ner. 7. Introduction 1. The declaration was made to Krt, a Canaanite god, by his son. The lines are cited by Brown, Poverty and Leadership, 69, who quotes from Gray, “Social Aspects,” 173–74. 2. Speech of Mr. Cushing, of Massachusetts, on the Right of Petition, as connected with petitions for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia in the House of Representatives, January 25,1836 (Washington: Gales & Beaton, 1836). 3. On the claims of early Near Eastern rulers to protect the vulnerable, see Fensham, “Widow, Orphan, and the Poor,” passim, and on Hammurabi, p. 129. There are also further examples in the laws of Ur-Namma (ca. 2100 bc) and Lipit-Ishtar (ca. 1930 bc), for which see Roth, Law Collections, 16–1 7 and 25,respectively. 4. Weinfeld, Social Justice, 225,gives an example of praise of a charitable Hittite ruler. 5. For a text, see Cavigneaux and Böhmer, Uruk, 60–61,no. 11 5.A translation is conveniently accessible at the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature based at the University of Oxford (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=c.3*#), 208 · Notes to pages 2–6 text 3.3.01.The translated text above, of lines 6–8 from ETCSL, follows the readings of the majority of manuscripts. 6. Hallo, “Individual Prayer,” 76–80. 7. Another example of early petitioners’ vulnerability is found in the petition of a widow to an official written in Hebrew and dating in the ninth to seventh centuries bc. In humility, she refers to herself as the official’s servant and asks for his support. On this text, see Shanks, “Three Shekels.” 8. On pleas for fairness rather than legal remedy, see Dobbs-Allsopp, “Genre,” 50. 9. On written petitions generally, see Alexander, “Aramaic Epistolography,” 158. On the evidence found of letters deposited at statue bases, see Hallo, “Individual Prayer,” 79. On the structure of petitions, Alexander, “Aramaic Epistolography,” 164. 10. Dobbs-Allsopp, “Genre,” 52, on the basis of 2 Sam. 14:4. 11. See Fensham, “Widow, Orphan, and the Poor,” 138, on the Israelite David receiving petitions. 12. The translation comes from VerSteeg, Law in Ancient Egypt, 23. 13. The Egyptian court allowed petitioners to present their cases orally or, if they lived far from the court, in writing. On procedure, see VerSteeg, ibid., 68–70. 14. Ibid., 52 n. 94. 15. See, for example, Ewick and Silbey, Common Place, 101. 16. On manumission, see Weinfeld, Social Justice, 193 n. 33. 17. The original publication is in PSI 402. See White, Form and Structure, appendix 2, for further examples of Greek petitions and letters. PSI 402 is the second document in the appendix. 18. The translation comes from White, ibid. 19. On this text and others of the period, see White, ibid. 20. See the critical edition of Parkinson, Eloquent Peasant. 21. From the Bellum Alexandrinum 52.2, we learn that a petitioner purportedly asked (postularet) for something from Cassius in his capacity as praetor peregrinus and requested (peteret) a response (responsum). The technical vocabulary suggests that this was petition and response, not a casual enquiry and informal reply. On early Roman petitioning, see also the first edition of Fergus Millar’s Emperor in the Roman World (hereafter referred to as ERW1), p. 466. That the receipt of petitions was widespread is suggested by the fact that Sertorius received petitions orally in Spain in the 80s bc (Plut. Sert. 20.3). 22. On this petition to an official sent by a Jewish woman in Arabia, see Bowersock , “Babatha Papyri,” 338–40, and Cotton, “Guardianship of Jesus,” 106–107. 23. On the variety of texts called libelli, see RE, s.v. “libellus.” They were sent as well as received by Roman rulers. Suetonius names Caesar’s recommendations of individuals to the various voting...