Abstract

Reviews 345 moindre éloge que l'on puisse décerner à ce volume que d'avoir contribué à rendre au sophiste la profondeui, 1 humanité et 1 actualité de son éloquence. Anne-Marie Favreau-Linder Clermont Ferrand Benjamin Kelly, Petitions, Litigation, and Social Control in Roman Egypt. (Oxford Studies in Ancient Documents), Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xix, 427. ISBN 9780199599615. $150.00. Benjamin Kelly's Petitions, Litigation, and Social Control in Roman Egypt (hereafter PLSCR) is an erudite, original, systematic, and clearly written study of how petitions functioned as instruments of social control in GraecoRoman Egypt from 30 BC to 284 AD. It is unique in surveying, and categoriz­ ing in appendices, the complete published corpus of 568 petitions and 227 proceedings reports from the period. As it is the best and most comprehen­ sive analysis of Graeco-Egyptian papyrus petitions and a landmark in juristic papyrology, as well as providing in-depth analysis of numerous individual petitions, it belongs in the personal libraries of rhetoricians researching late antiquity, and should be consulted by scholars interested in petitioning or forensic rhetoric in other periods. Although the hardcover price of $150 is somewhat daunting for scholars not working in the specific subfield, PLSCR is available via Oxford University Scholarship Online. PLSCR consists of nine chapters (333 pages), a glossary, maps, three appendices, a bibliography and indices. "Chapter 1: Introduction" (pp. 137 ) begins by discussing a small group of petitions concerning an ongoing feud between Satabous and Nestnephis, two Egyptian priests in a village in the Fayoum region. Close analysis of the specific petitions concerning this feud leads to more general discussion of what can legitimately be deduced from extant petitions and the limitations of petitions specifically, and papyri generally, as evidence. In a sense, PLSCR starts as a corpus of evidence in search of a theory. After discussing limitations of methodological frames such as criminality and dispute resolution, Kelly focuses on the theme of social control as a lens through which to analyze his corpus of petitions. Although primarily intended as background information, the lucid treatment of diachronic changes in administrative structure and terminology relevant to petitioning will be particularly valuable to non-papyrologists investigating Graeco-Egyptian rhetoric. The second chapter, "Petitions and Social Elistory" (pp. 38-74), analyzes the nature of petitions as evidence for social history. The treatment of peti­ tions as evidence is sensible and meticulous, addressing patterns of survival, the actual processes and contexts within which petitions were created, pre­ sented, archived, and answered, and the relationship of petitioning to the 346 RHETORICA court system. The description of the interplay of orality and literacy and petition and trial will be of particular interest to rhetoricians. In order to investigate social history through the medium of petition, Kelly, in essence, is trying to read through the petitions to the underlying realities. When he analyzes rhetorical formulae, it is to dismiss formulaic elements as irrele­ vant to determining the "innermost thoughts" of the petitioners and actual events. Thus the elements of petitioning which are of greatest interest to rhetoricians serve, as it were, as obstacles to social history, while the facts of the social historian would be the minimally relevant "atechnai pisteis" for the rhetorician, outside the art of rhetoric proper. "Chapter 3: Legal Control in Roman Egypt" (pp. 75-122) examines the efficacy of the petitioning system as a mechanism of social control. Kelly argues convincingly that Roman administrators' ethos of efficiency and justice was grounded in reality, but that the complexity of the system, with unclear jurisdictions, multiple levels of hierarchy, and limited staffing, made petitioning of limited effectiveness as a formal method of social control, albeit more useful as an informal one. For rhetoricians, the most useful material will be the comprehensive treatment of administrative process, application of multiple simultaneous (i.e. Egyptian, Roman, Jewish, and Greek) systems of law, and the way that petitioners could manipulate the system. Although Kelly's focus is not rhetorical history, this material provides fertile ground for a revaluation of the importance of the translative or jurisdictional stasis, which is normally treated as somewhat of a trivial afterthought, but which appears far more substantial and useful in light...