A Ptolemaic Petition to the Archidikastes (original) (raw)

Abstract

P.Fordham inv. 5 is a second century BCE petition to the archidikastes. This text is important because of the new light it sheds on the role of the ill-attested chief judicial official of the Ptolemaic empire, on interactions between the chora and Alexandria, and on the relationship between ethnicity and law in the later Ptolemaic period. An Egyptian woman, Senyris of Oxyrhynchos, petitions the archidikastes Demophon about her mistreatment at the hands of NN son of Pankrates, the father of her two children, who is not providing her with food or clothing (as per a contract of maintenance). She charges him with throwing her out of the house, having relations with another woman and, before the papyrus breaks off, refers to a complaint in connection with the laokritai. We have very few references to Ptolemaic archidikastai: two others are known by name among only a handful of attestations of the office. Comparison with earlier 2nd-century papyri suggest that the office merged with that of the πρὸς τῆι ἐμιμελείαι τῶν χρηματιστῶν sometime in the middle of the 2nd century, in any case, before the present document. The interpretation that he was in charge of the entire Ptolemaic judicial system receives support from the present document, but the fullest expression of the office's powers might date only from this suspected bureaucratic merger. This text will help us better understand both this important office and legal relations between the chora and Alexandria during this dynamic period of Ptolemaic history.

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