It did not begin well when, upon my removing the book from its envelope, several pages fell out. I wonder now if the linkage between the essays contained in it is not to some extent as weak. They originated in the first York University Seminar for Advanced Research in 1987-88. The introduction tells us the following: “The range of the contributions in this volume fully reflects that of the seminar. It focuses on the social context of the law in such areas as old Babylonian Mesopotamia, biblical Israel, classical Athens, Rome and Roman Greece, Italy, and Egypt, the Byzantine Levant, and the Middle Ages.” The editors valiantly try to find thematic unity, and indeed selective reading will find it. Yet on the whole I am not persuaded, despite claims of dialogue between a variety of areas, that it was wise to take so wide a sweep or that the difficulty of meshing together invited papers to cover it has been overcome. I imagine some thought must have gone into finding a title which would come near to encompassing the contents. Even so, it is in the category of “almost,” especially since the final essay concerns Mediaeval Jewish Bible interpretation and contains in its title elements which I do not have the fonts to reproduce. I shall not consider that paper (by Martin I. Lockshin), allowing this as a concession to myself as one who, in any case, does not have the expertise to provide equal critique in all areas. The major task, then, is to give an indication of contents in the various papers. In fact, readers can find a summary of each in the Introduction, a very useful expedient.
Reuven Yaron opens up with “Social Problems and Policies in the Ancient Near East.” In fact his essay concentrates on the possession, passage, and acquisition of land in Mesopotamia and biblical Israel. I should like to have been told why this focus was adopted and, within it, what the terms “rich,” “poor,” “well-to-do” signify in context and what might have been the general profile of land holding. We see acquisitiveness and the advantages which the richer—and indeed kings—hold over the poorer. It has ever been the case that whatever the law may say, whatever egalitarian or protective expressions it contains, the realities of social, economic and physical superiority will tell. So here the words of law are set against a reality which even the railings of the prophets could not much counter. There is considerable, if perhaps diffuse, detail and interesting highlighting of kinship networks as the best protector of a landholder’s rights.
M.P. Maidman gives us “Some Late Bronze Age Legal Tablets from the British Museum: Problems of Context and Meaning.” Indeed he concludes with publication, translation and annotation of 11 second millennium B.C. texts from Nuzi in northern Mesopotamia. Maidman shows that when one considers the context of these documents, private archives, their corresponding nature is unlikely to give detailed evidence for legal procedure: they retain only what was necessary for private purposes, for insurance against future claims in such areas as contracts and conveyances, and of course they record what is favorable to the person who decided to keep them. Yet the dealings shown in the documents do illuminate social and economic life.
Robert R. Wilson follows with “The Role of Law in Early Israelite Society.” Much of this short paper is concerned with directions of modern scholarship. It deals with the social setting of Israelite law, secular and religious, through the premonarchical, monarchical, and postexilic periods. We are given what are admittedly prolegomena to “a sociology of Israelite law”.
Virginia Hunter, “Agnatic Kinship in Athenian Law and Athenian Family Practice: its Implication for Woman” brought me to more familiar territory. Hunter shows that the ties between a woman and her natal kin, even after she married, remained strong and significant, as can be seen in the areas of adoption and inheritance. She has two tables of adoptions to illustrate (on p. 104 “see Table 2” should be “see Table 1”; and n. 2 on that page should refer to p. 107 n. 1, not p. 108). Adoption tended to be from close relatives and agnatic lines were important; the principles were akin to those for intestate succession. Being able at last to form some sort of informed judgment on a paper, I was glad that I could commend it. It is rich, clear and important.
Marguerite Deslauriers explores “Some Implications of Aristotle’s Conception of Authority,” authority, that is, as distinct from mechanisms of coercion. Now Aristotle did not develop a concept of political authority, so his view has to be excogitated from what he sets against coercion in the functioning of government. The unsurprising conclusion is that, as the state is natural, so authority is a natural part of it, recognised by convention, just as is the superior mental capacity of the male head of a household. Indeed, Aristotle’s understandings of the state and the family are interactive, though there are differences. Could not one ask, in the context of this volume, whether Aristotle’s ideas elucidate real society?
And so to Rome. Paul R. Swarney, “Social Status and Social Behaviour as Criteria in Judicial Proceedings in the Late Republic,” bases itself on three defence speeches of Cicero and argues that not evidence, but arguments concerning the social position of the parties involved were the essential material of judicial rhetoric, so much so that “What we witness in these events is less a judicial and more a social occasion” (p. 155). Leaving aside the last comment, did we not more or less know this already? Better proof reading (preferably by someone else) might have removed errors in the Latin quoted and in grammar. As for general historical statements, I littered the margins with question marks and occasionally, in addition, an astonished exclamation.
It was a pleasure then to pass on to the well organised and well documented paper of Jonathan Edmondson, “Instrumenta Imperii: Law and Imperialism in Republican Rome,” having regard both to Italy and to farther territories. As he says what he will do and then does it, I can do little better than repeat his own words concerning his suggestions about the effect of Roman legal and administrative regulations on the growing Empire (pp. 158-159). “First, at an immediate level, the regulations themselves made an impact on a functional/administrative level [unfortunate repetition of word]: they helped to articulate and ensure Roman control of subject territory. Secondly, a more long-term, cultural effect: they provided the subject communities with models of Roman administrative, judicial and even legal practices to imitate. Thirdly, the regulations also had a symbolic function as ‘instruments of Empire’… The physical impact of the plaques on which such regulations were inscribed and the context in which such plaques were set up is also revealing of the relationship between ruler and ruled in the emergent Roman Empire.”
With Deborah W. Hobson’s “The Impact of Law on Village Life in Roman Egypt,” we return to the saddening truth, here in a system “heavily dependent on self-help” (p. 216), that the strongest are best equipped to help themselves. Using documents from three differing places in the Egypt of the first three centuries A.D., she concludes that those from the metropolis of Oxyrhynchus show more knowledge of specifically applicable law. Petitions from rural areas are more general appeals for help in settling disputes. In any event, these petitions only came in when more informal attempts at settlement had failed, and even then there was no guarantee of action. We see petitioners shuffled around from authority to authority and feeling the need to appeal to two different levels of the system simultaneously. What has the law to do with justice?
“Slavery and Society in Late Roman Egypt,” by Roger Bagnall, seriously questions the orthodox belief that from the third century A.D., slavery declined dramatically in Egypt. Consideration of the nature of the surviving documentation, affected as it is by the disappearance of certain types of document, shows that it is a fallible guide to such a conclusion. Limited use of slaves can be seen on the land and as servants in grand houses. Overall there seems little change in the social and economic profile of slavery from earlier times. The treatment is careful and methodical, suggested results set forward judiciously.
And so finally to what, in terms of actual text, is the longest paper in the collection, 30 pages from Patrick T.R. Gray on “Palestine and Justinian’s Legislation on Non-Christian Religious.” We see measures to the disadvantage of Jews, Samaritans and other pagans, which in fact were not always carried through in practice or could be changed; indeed, in some places there may not have been any awareness of legislation and people carried on regardless. Pressure on the emperor for the creation of legislation came from the various arms of Christianity in the region: “Bishops, monks, landowners and military commanders formed a network which, by its ready means of access to the court, regularly and freely applied those pressures to the emperor” (p. 241). It is well, I think, to perceive the emperor’s “complex dialogue with the social world of the empire” (p. 268).
There is an index of references and an index of authors referred to. Surprisingly, however, there is no indication of the institutions to which the contributors are attached, i.e. no help for the unfortunate ignorant who may wish to make contact. If any feel that I have not done justice to their work, I can only apologise. If I remain uncomfortable with the degree of coherence among the essays, perhaps the editors will feel it unjust. But much in these pages shows that justice was (and still is) difficult to obtain. I hope only to have provided, as I signalled, an outline of each essay’s content and tendency.