The “Poor” Facing Late Antique Justice - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2022

The “Poor” Facing Late Antique Justice

Christel Freu

Résumé

In Late Antique literature, the poor man is often presented as a person suffering social isolation and oppressed by someone powerful, a person confronting alone institutions structured by great inequalities. The poor are then depicted in various situations of oppression: debt mechanisms, fiscal pressure, labour domination. It will be interesting to compare this picture drawn from Christian literature with the primary evidence of the papyri. Egyptian documents preserved a certain number of petitions to authorities and judicial settlements which show the poor’s position in the judicial system. Are they more often plaintiffs than defendants? How can they defend themselves when they are charged in court? The chapter will investigate various aspects of the subject: -the local Late judicial system and the conditions of intervention in court; -the social position of the two parties, counting the cases where inequality prevails vs the cases where the parties are socially equal; -the ways the cases are settled by the judicial magistrates or by ‘arbitration’.
Fichier non déposé

Dates et versions

hal-04386435 , version 1 (10-01-2024)

Identifiants

Citer

Christel Freu. The “Poor” Facing Late Antique Justice: the Cases from the Papyri. Poverty in Ancient Greece and Rome, 1, Routledge, pp.258-276, 2022, ⟨10.4324/9780367221157-16⟩. ⟨hal-04386435⟩
18 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More