Ari Bryen | Vanderbilt University (original) (raw)
Books by Ari Bryen
What can we learn about the world of an ancient empire from the ways that people complain when th... more What can we learn about the world of an ancient empire from the ways that people complain when they feel that they have been violated? What role did law play in people's lives? And what did they expect their government to do for them when they felt harmed and helpless?
If ancient historians have frequently written about nonelite people as if they were undifferentiated and interchangeable, Ari Z. Bryen counters by drawing on one of our few sources of personal narratives from the Roman world: over a hundred papyrus petitions, submitted to local and imperial officials, in which individuals from the Egyptian countryside sought redress for acts of violence committed against them. By assembling these long-neglected materials (also translated as an appendix to the book) and putting them in conversation with contemporary perspectives from legal anthropology and social theory, Bryen shows how legal stories were used to work out relations of deference within local communities.
Rather than a simple force of imperial power, an open legal system allowed petitioners to define their relationships with their local adversaries while contributing to the body of rules and expectations by which they would live in the future. In so doing, these Egyptian petitioners contributed to the creation of Roman imperial order more generally.
Papers by Ari Bryen
Roman and Local Citizenship in the Long Second Century CE, 2021
in Lavan & Ando (eds.), Roman and Local Citizenship in the Long Second Century CE (Oxford U. Pres... more in Lavan & Ando (eds.), Roman and Local Citizenship in the Long Second Century CE (Oxford U. Press), p. 41-68
The Cambridge Comparative History of Ancient Law (ed. C. Humfress, D. Ibbetson, P. Olivelle), 2024
This chapter deals with all manner of state-derived prohibitions. Ancient states prohibited a bro... more This chapter deals with all manner of state-derived prohibitions. Ancient states prohibited a broad variety of behaviours, threatening punishment for those who would transgress boundaries. The logic of prohibition was wide-ranging: from the marking of spaces, objects and officials as somehow distinct from the rest of ‘society’, leading factions within ancient states sought to preserve and protect their individual prerogatives. They also sought to reinforce their claims to leadership by incentivizing subjects to settle their disputes in state-sanctioned venues. The evidence for such prohibitions is extensive, but did they add up to something that we might legitimately call ‘social control’? Did ancient states succeed at inducing subject populations to accept their claims to rule? If so, how? This chapter suggests that the logic of prohibition was a site of contestation for both statecraft and subject-craft.
Legal Engagement: The reception of Roman law and tribunals by Jews and other inhabitants of the Empire, 2021
The “Berlin Legal Codex,” recently republished as P.Aktenbuch, is a puzzling document: it purport... more The “Berlin Legal Codex,” recently republished as P.Aktenbuch, is a puzzling document: it purports to record a series of criminal judgments given by an unnamed governor (hēgemōn) against a range of malefactors. Given the rarity of criminal verdicts in the corpus of papyri more generally, P.Aktenbuch would seem to be of the highest importance; however, there are many reasons to doubt whether it records actual verdicts given in the governor’s court. More likely, it is a literary artifact that uses criminal punishment to meditate on the question of sovereignty more generally. In this respect, it seems to be a cousin of the more famous Martyr Acts or Acta Alexandrinorum – but with an important twist: in the Aktenbuch, the governor is unambiguously good, whereas the victims are unambiguously bad. The Aktenbuch is in that sense an inverted Martyr Act. Unlike the martyr acts, the text is also constructed as a series of monologues, rather than a series of dialogues between empire and subject. Most unusually for a Roman provincial document, the Aktenbuch celebrates violent punishments, and should be read as part of a broader provincial conversation on the nature of sovereignty.
In A. Lanni (ed.), A Cultural History of Crime, vol. 1 (Antiquity), 2023
In his oration To Rome, the second-century Greek rhetorician Aelius Aristides could proclaim that... more In his oration To Rome, the second-century Greek rhetorician Aelius Aristides could proclaim that the Roman world fulfilled its historic destiny of pacification and the creation of order: …the entire inhabited world cries out together, with more precision than a chorus, all praying that this empire should last for all time-so well trained it is by its chorus-master, the emperor. Everywhere is equally subjected to rule, and those who live in the hills are more humble than those who live in the widest plains, at least so far as not presenting any opposition. The landholders and colonists in the most blessed plains are your farmers. There is no distinction between continent and island, but like a single, continuous landmass populated by a single race in all respects they obey in silence. (Or.
TAPA, 2019
This paper uses a close reading of Dio’s Euboicus to reflect on the understandings of law, justic... more This paper uses a close reading of Dio’s Euboicus to reflect on the understandings of law, justice, and politics among Greek intellectuals in the high empire more generally. The Euboicus can be read as a satire concerning urban political autonomy in an empire; these rituals of political autonomy and judgment, Dio argues, were ultimately empty. Accordingly, in the second part of the speech Dio presents a vision of social reform in which he envisions the possibility of a world without legal politics.
The Oxford Handbook of Law and the Humanities, 2019
Forthcoming in S. Stern, M. Del Mar, and B. Meyler (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Law and the Hum... more Forthcoming in S. Stern, M. Del Mar, and B. Meyler (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Law and the Humanities
Chiron, 2018
The transition from Republic to Principate has often been characterized as a process of quashing ... more The transition from Republic to Principate has often been characterized as a process of quashing political violence by centralizing political power in the person of the emperor. This paper argues instead that the transition is marked by a new understanding of the relationship between violence and politics, a transition that might be characterized as a move from concern with vis to a new understanding of political violence based on the concept of iniuria. This new set of metaphors posed problems in particular for the jurist M. Antistius Labeo, whose writing reflect a concern with how to delimit the concept of iniuria, an old concept with newly politicized significance.
We are pleased to announce the publication of a new symposium in History Compass, "Environment an... more We are pleased to announce the publication of a new symposium in History Compass, "Environment and Society in the Ancient World," featuring the following papers:
Mediterranean archeology and environmental histories in the spotlight of the Anthropocene
- Catherine Kearns (Chicago)
The environmental history of Classical and Hellenistic Greece: The contribution of environmental archaeology
- Ruben Post (Penn)
Water and power: Reintegrating the state into the study of Egyptian irrigation
- Brendan Haug (Michigan)
Beyond the Nile: Orientalism, environmental history, and ancient Egypt's Mareotide (northwestern Nile Delta)
- Katherine Blouin (Toronto)
Approaches to the environmental history of Late Antiquity, part 1: The rise of Islam
- Michael J. Decker (South Florida)
Approaches to the environmental history of Late Antiquity, part II: Climate Change and the End of the Roman Empire
- Michael J. Decker (South Florida)
The papers are available for free at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hic3.v15.10/issuetoc
History Compass publishes peer-reviewed articles on the most important research and thinking across the entire discipline, with no restrictions in terms of geography, time period or historical methodology. Commissioned from leading researchers, History Compass articles are distinguished from those of traditional journals by their combination of original research and analysis with a broader expertise and understanding of how that fits—as both contribution and intervention—in the authors’ fields or sub-fields. Because the journal publishes peer-reviewed, state-of-the-field articles on a continual, monthly basis, it is unencumbered by rigid publishing timelines, ensuring that topical and significant research reaches the public effectively and efficiently. History Compass adheres to the same quality control procedures as for any Wiley journal, both in terms of editorial and production standards.
The Oxford Handbook of Roman Law and Society, 2016
This chapter addresses two “crimes” against the individual: violation of his public face (iniuria... more This chapter addresses two “crimes” against the individual: violation of his public face (iniuria), and violation of his household (stuprum and adulterium). More than mere prohibited offenses, these two types of harm came, during the crises of sovereignty of the late Republic and early Principate, to be potent loci for thinking about the ideal citizen, his political relationships, and the nature of the Roman state. Though these categories were linked together through doctrinal law, their impact is evident in a variety of texts from this period, and so demonstrate the ways in which “law” and “society” were deeply linked at the levels of the fundamental cognitive structures that enabled the Romans to make sense of their lived and historical experience.
The Roman jurists still tend to be read in isolation from their surrounding milieu. This article ... more The Roman jurists still tend to be read in isolation from their surrounding milieu. This article suggests a way of thinking about them as being in conversation with different constituencies within the Empire who competed with jurists to offer their own contributions to the body of law. In this article, I outline some select moments when jurists acknowledged those competing voices, if only to reject them. To do so, I adapt some recent work from the study of Talmud to read these moments as interruptions within an otherwise staid world of jurisprudence. Specifically, I argue that we might productively think of these moments as " aggadah."
Law and Social Inquiry 40.3, 2015
Classical Philology 109, 2014
This article argues that recent work in the field of Roman legal history has reached a critical m... more This article argues that recent work in the field of Roman legal history has reached a critical mass, necessitating a re-thinking of traditional methods and assumptions. Part I reviews historiographical trends in the study of Roman legal history in two decades. Part II raises the question of what should count as a “legal” source and why, arguing that a much larger segment of the ancient world than scholars have traditionally thought participated in the creation of such rules. Part III discusses the value of the popular legal commentary, and suggests one possible new strategy for writing Roman legal history.
Classical Antiquity 33.2, 2014
This article uses the evidence of the early Christian martyr acts to argue for the existence of a... more This article uses the evidence of the early Christian martyr acts to argue for the existence of a broader, provincial discourse on the importance of legal procedure in criminal trials in the Roman Empire. By focusing on moments of criminal confrontations, these texts not only attempted to explain and glorify the deaths of martyrs, but also sought to make sense of a process that was designed by the Roman state to be arbitrary and terrifying. In the course of their narratives, the martyr acts articulate a distinctly provincial understanding of imperial judicial procedures. They politicize this understanding in ways consequential for current scholarly models of the relations between the imperial government and provincial society more broadly.
Violence and Civilization, ed. Rod Campbell, 2014
Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 2017
What can we learn about the world of an ancient empire from the ways that people complain when th... more What can we learn about the world of an ancient empire from the ways that people complain when they feel that they have been violated? What role did law play in people's lives? And what did they expect their government to do for them when they felt harmed and helpless?
If ancient historians have frequently written about nonelite people as if they were undifferentiated and interchangeable, Ari Z. Bryen counters by drawing on one of our few sources of personal narratives from the Roman world: over a hundred papyrus petitions, submitted to local and imperial officials, in which individuals from the Egyptian countryside sought redress for acts of violence committed against them. By assembling these long-neglected materials (also translated as an appendix to the book) and putting them in conversation with contemporary perspectives from legal anthropology and social theory, Bryen shows how legal stories were used to work out relations of deference within local communities.
Rather than a simple force of imperial power, an open legal system allowed petitioners to define their relationships with their local adversaries while contributing to the body of rules and expectations by which they would live in the future. In so doing, these Egyptian petitioners contributed to the creation of Roman imperial order more generally.
Roman and Local Citizenship in the Long Second Century CE, 2021
in Lavan & Ando (eds.), Roman and Local Citizenship in the Long Second Century CE (Oxford U. Pres... more in Lavan & Ando (eds.), Roman and Local Citizenship in the Long Second Century CE (Oxford U. Press), p. 41-68
The Cambridge Comparative History of Ancient Law (ed. C. Humfress, D. Ibbetson, P. Olivelle), 2024
This chapter deals with all manner of state-derived prohibitions. Ancient states prohibited a bro... more This chapter deals with all manner of state-derived prohibitions. Ancient states prohibited a broad variety of behaviours, threatening punishment for those who would transgress boundaries. The logic of prohibition was wide-ranging: from the marking of spaces, objects and officials as somehow distinct from the rest of ‘society’, leading factions within ancient states sought to preserve and protect their individual prerogatives. They also sought to reinforce their claims to leadership by incentivizing subjects to settle their disputes in state-sanctioned venues. The evidence for such prohibitions is extensive, but did they add up to something that we might legitimately call ‘social control’? Did ancient states succeed at inducing subject populations to accept their claims to rule? If so, how? This chapter suggests that the logic of prohibition was a site of contestation for both statecraft and subject-craft.
Legal Engagement: The reception of Roman law and tribunals by Jews and other inhabitants of the Empire, 2021
The “Berlin Legal Codex,” recently republished as P.Aktenbuch, is a puzzling document: it purport... more The “Berlin Legal Codex,” recently republished as P.Aktenbuch, is a puzzling document: it purports to record a series of criminal judgments given by an unnamed governor (hēgemōn) against a range of malefactors. Given the rarity of criminal verdicts in the corpus of papyri more generally, P.Aktenbuch would seem to be of the highest importance; however, there are many reasons to doubt whether it records actual verdicts given in the governor’s court. More likely, it is a literary artifact that uses criminal punishment to meditate on the question of sovereignty more generally. In this respect, it seems to be a cousin of the more famous Martyr Acts or Acta Alexandrinorum – but with an important twist: in the Aktenbuch, the governor is unambiguously good, whereas the victims are unambiguously bad. The Aktenbuch is in that sense an inverted Martyr Act. Unlike the martyr acts, the text is also constructed as a series of monologues, rather than a series of dialogues between empire and subject. Most unusually for a Roman provincial document, the Aktenbuch celebrates violent punishments, and should be read as part of a broader provincial conversation on the nature of sovereignty.
In A. Lanni (ed.), A Cultural History of Crime, vol. 1 (Antiquity), 2023
In his oration To Rome, the second-century Greek rhetorician Aelius Aristides could proclaim that... more In his oration To Rome, the second-century Greek rhetorician Aelius Aristides could proclaim that the Roman world fulfilled its historic destiny of pacification and the creation of order: …the entire inhabited world cries out together, with more precision than a chorus, all praying that this empire should last for all time-so well trained it is by its chorus-master, the emperor. Everywhere is equally subjected to rule, and those who live in the hills are more humble than those who live in the widest plains, at least so far as not presenting any opposition. The landholders and colonists in the most blessed plains are your farmers. There is no distinction between continent and island, but like a single, continuous landmass populated by a single race in all respects they obey in silence. (Or.
TAPA, 2019
This paper uses a close reading of Dio’s Euboicus to reflect on the understandings of law, justic... more This paper uses a close reading of Dio’s Euboicus to reflect on the understandings of law, justice, and politics among Greek intellectuals in the high empire more generally. The Euboicus can be read as a satire concerning urban political autonomy in an empire; these rituals of political autonomy and judgment, Dio argues, were ultimately empty. Accordingly, in the second part of the speech Dio presents a vision of social reform in which he envisions the possibility of a world without legal politics.
The Oxford Handbook of Law and the Humanities, 2019
Forthcoming in S. Stern, M. Del Mar, and B. Meyler (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Law and the Hum... more Forthcoming in S. Stern, M. Del Mar, and B. Meyler (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Law and the Humanities
Chiron, 2018
The transition from Republic to Principate has often been characterized as a process of quashing ... more The transition from Republic to Principate has often been characterized as a process of quashing political violence by centralizing political power in the person of the emperor. This paper argues instead that the transition is marked by a new understanding of the relationship between violence and politics, a transition that might be characterized as a move from concern with vis to a new understanding of political violence based on the concept of iniuria. This new set of metaphors posed problems in particular for the jurist M. Antistius Labeo, whose writing reflect a concern with how to delimit the concept of iniuria, an old concept with newly politicized significance.
We are pleased to announce the publication of a new symposium in History Compass, "Environment an... more We are pleased to announce the publication of a new symposium in History Compass, "Environment and Society in the Ancient World," featuring the following papers:
Mediterranean archeology and environmental histories in the spotlight of the Anthropocene
- Catherine Kearns (Chicago)
The environmental history of Classical and Hellenistic Greece: The contribution of environmental archaeology
- Ruben Post (Penn)
Water and power: Reintegrating the state into the study of Egyptian irrigation
- Brendan Haug (Michigan)
Beyond the Nile: Orientalism, environmental history, and ancient Egypt's Mareotide (northwestern Nile Delta)
- Katherine Blouin (Toronto)
Approaches to the environmental history of Late Antiquity, part 1: The rise of Islam
- Michael J. Decker (South Florida)
Approaches to the environmental history of Late Antiquity, part II: Climate Change and the End of the Roman Empire
- Michael J. Decker (South Florida)
The papers are available for free at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hic3.v15.10/issuetoc
History Compass publishes peer-reviewed articles on the most important research and thinking across the entire discipline, with no restrictions in terms of geography, time period or historical methodology. Commissioned from leading researchers, History Compass articles are distinguished from those of traditional journals by their combination of original research and analysis with a broader expertise and understanding of how that fits—as both contribution and intervention—in the authors’ fields or sub-fields. Because the journal publishes peer-reviewed, state-of-the-field articles on a continual, monthly basis, it is unencumbered by rigid publishing timelines, ensuring that topical and significant research reaches the public effectively and efficiently. History Compass adheres to the same quality control procedures as for any Wiley journal, both in terms of editorial and production standards.
The Oxford Handbook of Roman Law and Society, 2016
This chapter addresses two “crimes” against the individual: violation of his public face (iniuria... more This chapter addresses two “crimes” against the individual: violation of his public face (iniuria), and violation of his household (stuprum and adulterium). More than mere prohibited offenses, these two types of harm came, during the crises of sovereignty of the late Republic and early Principate, to be potent loci for thinking about the ideal citizen, his political relationships, and the nature of the Roman state. Though these categories were linked together through doctrinal law, their impact is evident in a variety of texts from this period, and so demonstrate the ways in which “law” and “society” were deeply linked at the levels of the fundamental cognitive structures that enabled the Romans to make sense of their lived and historical experience.
The Roman jurists still tend to be read in isolation from their surrounding milieu. This article ... more The Roman jurists still tend to be read in isolation from their surrounding milieu. This article suggests a way of thinking about them as being in conversation with different constituencies within the Empire who competed with jurists to offer their own contributions to the body of law. In this article, I outline some select moments when jurists acknowledged those competing voices, if only to reject them. To do so, I adapt some recent work from the study of Talmud to read these moments as interruptions within an otherwise staid world of jurisprudence. Specifically, I argue that we might productively think of these moments as " aggadah."
Law and Social Inquiry 40.3, 2015
Classical Philology 109, 2014
This article argues that recent work in the field of Roman legal history has reached a critical m... more This article argues that recent work in the field of Roman legal history has reached a critical mass, necessitating a re-thinking of traditional methods and assumptions. Part I reviews historiographical trends in the study of Roman legal history in two decades. Part II raises the question of what should count as a “legal” source and why, arguing that a much larger segment of the ancient world than scholars have traditionally thought participated in the creation of such rules. Part III discusses the value of the popular legal commentary, and suggests one possible new strategy for writing Roman legal history.
Classical Antiquity 33.2, 2014
This article uses the evidence of the early Christian martyr acts to argue for the existence of a... more This article uses the evidence of the early Christian martyr acts to argue for the existence of a broader, provincial discourse on the importance of legal procedure in criminal trials in the Roman Empire. By focusing on moments of criminal confrontations, these texts not only attempted to explain and glorify the deaths of martyrs, but also sought to make sense of a process that was designed by the Roman state to be arbitrary and terrifying. In the course of their narratives, the martyr acts articulate a distinctly provincial understanding of imperial judicial procedures. They politicize this understanding in ways consequential for current scholarly models of the relations between the imperial government and provincial society more broadly.
Violence and Civilization, ed. Rod Campbell, 2014
Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 2017
Legal Regimes and Legal Change in Antiquity UC Berkeley, April 13th and 14th 142 Dwinelle Hall F... more Legal Regimes and Legal Change in Antiquity
UC Berkeley, April 13th and 14th
142 Dwinelle Hall
Friday, April 13th
10.00-10.45 Introduction: Law in many pieces
(Ari Bryen, UCB)
11.00-12.00 Nie pozwalam! The Athenian self-enforcing constitution and the procedure of graphe paranomon revised
(Federica Carrugati, Stanford)
12.15-1.15 Lawcourts and judicial administration in Hellenistic Athens: Old and new evidence
(Nikolaos Papazarkadas, UCB)
Lunch
2.15-3.15 Law and the seizing of property and people in the Hellenistic world
(Lisa Eberle, UCB)
3.30-4.30 The role of local judges in Roman jurisdiction: A case of Asia Minor provinces
(Georgy Kantor, Oxford)
4.45-5.45 Pluralism and empire, from Rome to Robert Cover
(Clifford Ando, U. Chicago)
Dinner
Saturday, April 14th
9.45-10.45 Challenging the Roman municipal model : Greek responses to imperial rule
(Cédric Brélaz, Strasbourg)
11.00-12.00 Dike’s dwellings: Jurisdiction and its spaces in the Roman Empire
(Roland Faerber, Munich)
12.15-1.15 The view from below: Guilds, law, and the economy
(Phil Venticinque, Cornell College)
Lunch
2.00-3.00 (Re)re-considering the Roman Colonate
(Cam Grey, U. Penn)
3.15-4.15 Constituting late antique Muslim identities: The charity tax
(Lena Salaymeh, UCB)
4.30-5.30: Closing Discussion
This conference is open to the public. For further information, please contact the organizers, Ari Bryen (azbryen@berkeley.edu) or Lisa Eberle (lpeberle@berkeley.edu)
With generous support from the following institutions at UC-Berkeley: Dept. of Rhetoric, Dept. of Classics, The Robbins Collection, The Townsend Center for the Humanities, The Aleshire Center for the Study of Greek Epigraphy