The main series

1. P.Oxy. 37 [ed. Grenfell, Hunt] (= M. Chr. 79 = Meyer, JP 90 = HE 257 = P.Tryph. 23), AD 49. This is a good one to begin with, because it is of early date and, though short, contains virtually all it ever contained.

⁴⁸ E.g. BGU 361 (no. 18 of our â€?main series’), col. Ill, line 2, ho nomikos ho ten ^Olkonomian grapsas (the oikonomia being the document - the will, in fact - in issue).

. ⁴⁹ E.g. IGRR IV 1226 (Thyatira) or SB 7696 (no. 29 of oui â€?main series’), where a man *s nomikos at one point and rhetor a few lines lower - though the editors suppose the latter word to be just a slip.

to him, as can be seen from P.Oxy. 38. â€?From the court record of Tiberios Klaudios Pasion, strategos, 9th year of Tiberios Klaudios Kaisar Sebastos Germanikos Autokrator, 3 Pharmou- thi, epi tou bematos “on the tribunal”:⁵⁰ Pesouris against Saraeus. Aristokles rhetor on behalf of Pesouris....’ The plaintiffs advocate gives a narratio, reported in oratio recta, â€?on behalf of ho hemeteros (“our client”)’, and produces documenta­tion. The defendant speaks for herself, although there is another participant,⁵¹ who says grommata tou somatiou echomen â€?we have writings of (as to) the slave’. The judgment⁵² bears no relation to the advocate’s argument, but is based on an inspection of the child and its likeness to the defendant, and is in any case a repetition of what the Prefect had already provisionally decided; â€?Since, from his appearance, the child seems to be the child of Saraeus, if she and her husband sign a statement that the slave entrusted to her by Pesouris is dead, it appears to me right, in accordance with the decision of the Lord Governor, that she should repay the money she received and have her own child back.’ The defendant did not comply, and the plaintiff went back to the Prefect.

2. P.Flor. 61 [ed. Vitelli] (= M. Chr. 80), AD 85.⁵³ This document has, like No. 1, the merit of fair completeness as well as a firm, and early, date. The proceedings are before the Prefect, the subject-matter alleged failure to repay a loan of wheat. Both parties have advocates, whose remarks, in oratio recta, are not devoid of appeals to sentiment and abuse of the other side. The plaintiff seems, at the beginning, to be in danger of a flogging: Arangio-Ruiz quoted this document as an example how humble plaintiffs were subject to sarcasm and violence.⁵⁴ There is a dialogue between the plaintiff and the Prefect, and then Cephalo, advocate for the plaintiff, steps in: his client has, it seems, gone wrong about the initial procedural steps; â€?We beg that he shall not suffer a flogging for this, and, in any event, here

⁵⁰ epi tou bematos is uncommon: more usual pro bematos, as numerous times in the documents that follow.

⁵¹ The original editors treated this person as the defendant’s advocate; in HE he is thought to be a second advocate on the side of the plaintiff; Wenger in M. Chr. took him to be the woman’s husband.

⁵² Which was inoperative, anyway.

⁵³ Discussions: Arangio-Ruiz in Papiri della regia Università di Milano I, 208, n. 3; Katzoff.

⁵⁴ And see no. 7, below.

III. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 71 is his case.’ Cephalo only gets in one sentence of narratio, ending, belligerently, â€?... and I think they ought not just to be heirs to the cash but also to pay back the debts owed by those whose inheritance they have stepped into’: Aristonikos, advocate for the defendant, lets him get no further, demanding that proof of the obligation be supplied. Cephalo reads what he claims to be the receipt for the loan, dated in the 11th year of Tiberius Claudius,⁵⁵ and Aristonikos retorts with abuse and with the assertion that his client is euschemon, a â€?man of property’.

After a lacuna we are in the midst of a further interrogation of the plaintiff by the Prefect. To some question the plaintiff replies â€?I do not know’, and the Prefect retorts â€?That which you do not know, neither do we...’.⁵⁶ Cephalo repeats that no repayment has ever been made, and the Prefect says â€?There are two questions: is this in fact the receipt of the defendant’s father, and why have you not pursued this claim before?’ Aristonikos comes swiftly in again: â€?That is a very pertinent question: but I put the general⁵⁷ point to you: there is a traditional five to ten year limit to debt claims:⁵⁸ the Prefects have laid it down.’ The plaintiffs advocate is heard no more: his client takes over, attempting to explain the long delay, and makes a mess of it. The Prefect says â€?Even when there was famine, did you not even then call for that wheat to be given back, if it was really owed you?’ Plaintiff says â€?He offered me 4 mnai.’⁵⁹ Aristonikos then begins to pile on the rhetoric: â€?If you succeed in this, thousands of people will bring forward (alleged) receipts by my client’s father; and my client is an orphan.’ The Prefect to the plaintiff: “You deserve to be flogged for causing the arrest of a well-furnished man and his wife. But I’ll be reasonable with you canaille. You produce a forty-year-old receipt: I’ll make you a present of half that time. Come back in twenty years.’ And, says the text, he ordered the receipt to be destroyed.

⁵⁵ I.e. either 20 or more than 30 years previously to these proceedings, according to whether the emperor meant is Nero or Claudius; the sequel shows that it probably must

the latter.

⁵⁶ The lacuna is vexing, because this is the remark that scholars think sarcastic; the more evident sarcasm comes later.

⁵⁷ to katholikon the â€?general point’ or â€?point of principle’: again in P.Mich. inv. no. 148 verso (no. 12, below), Col.

⁵⁸Viz. in the law of Egypt.

⁵⁹I.e. money in lieu ofâ€?specific performance’.

It is tempting to see here persecution by everybody of the humble plaintiff who has had the nerve to take on one of the �better sort’, but that may be hasty, because the plaintiffs case looks weak and factitious. But the aspects more germane to our subject are, first, the constant interplay between the parties, their advocates, and the judge, and, secondly, the amount of rhetorical artifice that comes through even so dense a filter as the record of the Prefect’s court: sarcasm, sob-stuff, snob-appeal, abuse, deference to the judge, even the typically Ciceronian globalisation of the single case - �they’ll all want it!’ Aristonikos is a real professional.

3.P.Vindob.Worp 1 [ed. Worp], reign of Domitian. This recent addition to the body of evidence^[175] is probably from the Arsinoite nome, before what judge remains unclear. The Collectors of Taxes are suing villagers for non-payment; the Collectors present their case �through (dia) Apollonius, rhetor’, and some persons from, or on behalf of, the village reply �through Hermaeus, rhetor’. In each case the argument is recorded, though in oratio obliqua. For the villagers a surprising argument is offered, that they are tax­exempt because the village is dedicated to the god. It is not clear whether that is a �try-on’ by their advocate, but he does have another string to his bow, that the strategos Hermeias, presu­mably at a previous hearing, had judged in his clients’ favour. It is not clear, either, (though I think it should be inferred) that the parties are present, and unfortunately we do not hear the outcome.

^.P.Fam.Tebt. 19 [ed. Van Groningen] (= SB 9252), AD 118, is a copy of the court record of the strategos of the Polemonian district of the Arsinoite nome. The subject is a loan, and a judgment of distraint on land for its non-payment, that judgment dated earlier than AD 107, i.e.

III. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 73 strategos orders the reading of an essential earlier minute which constitutes the plaintiff’s principal case, and then at once proceeds to a judgment: �It seems right (eulogon) to me that all that is owed should be paid to Dieras tomorrow.’ The plaintiff in person adds a fervent hope (and we are now in oratio recta) that the defendants will comply, and Kronion in person raises the matter of expenses the defendants have had with the property, to which the magistrate replies that those can be recovered when the plaintiff has gathered the harvest on his restored property.

Scholars keen on the influence of rhetoric on the law have seized on the word eulogon to claim this as an example of �equitable’ decision, but that word need imply no more than �reasonable’, i.e. correct on the case stated. This document is further evidence of the dilatoriness of the legal system in Roman Egypt; but the main question germane to our theme is why the parties, and not their advocates, take up the tale after the giving of judgment. A mere guess, no more, might be that these advocates had been retained only to make the set speeches, and left the court thereafter.

5. P.Fam.Tebt. 24 (and SB 7604) [ed. Van Groningen], AD 124, is a long document of great complexity,^[178] containing, like a Chinese box, quotations from earlier proceedings; and it is, itself, only one item in a wrangle of even more daunting complexity, extending over many years, about responsibility for custody and maintenance of documents in the public record office of the Arsinoite nome.

have, in their summary form, no particularly rhetorical character; they thread their way through a complicated narratio of the facts as seen from their standpoint, ending in each case with an attempt to shift the responsibility elsewhere. They are efficient, but fail to address what we might have thought crucial: the relative responsibilities in law of the clerks and the liturgical Masters of the Records whose servants they are. The only law was, perhaps, previous administrative rulings.

At the conclusion of the speeches the judge calls for the reading of certain previous protocols, including one of a long case in AD 114,^[180] and after that at once delivers judgment, without reasons. In fact, the judgment essentially leaves the parties to fight it out elsewhere as to who ought to pay: �X must pay, but may be entitled to recover from Y, or they can appeal to a higher court.’ For all the judge is concerned with is to get carried out a prefectorial decision about the archives, after years of procrastination and litigation. After judgment one party asks for a standstill on the alienation of property pending execution: the judge (this wrangle has evidently gone on beyond a joke) orders confiscation of the property of all the interested parties! Why the parties employed multiple advocates, goodness knows.

6. CPR I 18 [ed. Wessely] (= M. Chr. 84 = Meyer JP 89 = Bruns⁷, 189), AD 124. This is an extract from the court record of Blaesius Marianus, prefect of Cohors I Flauia Cilicum equitata, acting as index datus by the Prefect. The protocol expressly notes the attendance and consultation of Klaudios Artemidoros, nomikos. The subject-matter is succession.^[181] Proceedings begin with the narratio of the plaintiffs advocate, given in oratio obliqua·. his claim is that his client has the right to succeed to his deceased son by an agraphos gamos as against the defendant, who claims succession as the son’s testamentary heir. The defendant’s reply, through his advocate, is that Egyptian law permits people to leave their estate to whom they please. The· judge first calls for the reading of the will and then consults the nomikos, on the basis of whose expert testimony he gives judgment for the plaintiff on the ground that children of an agraphos gamos have no right of testation during the lifetime of

III. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 75 their father. There is at once a shouting-match between - it is reasonable to infer - the parties in person, defendant claiming that the testator’s father’s marriage had not been agraphos but engraphos, and plaintiff insisting to the contrary. The judge thereupon says it is up to the plaintiff to justify his assertion within sixty days, and permits temporary freezing of the assets of the estate.

From our point of view the main interest of this example is not so much that judgment is given by a Roman court for Greco-Egyptians on the basis of Greco-Egyptian law,^[182] but that the defendant’s advocate makes an allegation as to the law which, to judge from the ruling of the nomikos, is false, and does not present at all what turns out to be his client’s argument of fact, that the marriage was not agraphos. It may be that that contention was a last desperate shot by the defendant on his own responsibility, but it is surprising that his advocate pleaded bad law, since, with a nomikos present, he could hardly expect to get away with it; we can only assume that he did not know the correct legal position.

7. P.Mil.Vogl. 25 [ed. Vogliano] (repr. as SB Beiheft 2 no. 3, pp. 30ff.),^[183] AD 127. Two texts are preserved in this papyrus, both being copies of proceedings before the strategos of the Polemonian district of the Arsinoite nome, acting as iudex datus by the Prefect. In the first case, with which alone we are concerned - and it is one of the best for our purpose - a freedman, Demetrios, is suing a rather grand personage, Paulinos, ex-gymnasiarch,^[184] mainly on a loan of 2,000 drachmas allegedly made by him to Paulinos’ deceased brother, Geminos (except that the receipt is said to have been made out in the name of a friend, one Atrenos). Paulinos is sued in his capacity as guardian to Geminos’ heirs. Each party has an advocate, Ammonios for the plaintiff and Palamedes for the defendant; as in No. 2 above, there is a climate of hostility towards the humble plaintiff, and the defendant’s advocate comes over as much the more skilful.

Ammonios begins: he briefly summarises his client’s written

statement of claim and launches into a short narratio: �how Geminos got the money, I will explain.’ Palamedes, by contrast, begins with a preamble reminiscent of Cicero:^[185] �My client could have brought this charge crashing to the ground merely by pointing out that he is not the guardian of his brother’s sons; but in order that you may have a full picture of our opponents’ kakopragmosyne (�malpractices’)....’ And when he begins his narratio it is about a side-issue which the plaintiffs advocate has already said, and the plaintiff intervenes to repeat, he is not for the present pursuing, namely an insinuation that the plaintiff had cheated in a different and quite irrelevant transaction. And the magistrate (shame!) forces the plaintiff to give an answer. Only then does Palamedes introduce his narratio on the issue really before the court. He says: �It is necessary to say this much about the parties, that Geminos was a man of great substance (euschemonestatos), whereas Deme­trios is a pauper, who will be unable to show any cause why he^[186] should have had the money. And the fact that he was freedman procurator of Geminos makes it distinctly possible that he got the receipt by theft; and he has hesitated to bring it to court until Geminos was dead. And what shows him up for the fraudster that he is is that he cannot even tell you who this Atrenos is.’ The plaintiff in person interrupts to say �It isn’t Atrenos but Deios, son of Atrenos, a friend of mine.’ There follows an altercatio between him and Palamedes, and it looks^[187] as if his advocate has left him in the firing-line through not being properly briefed (it seems that he has made a blunder as to the name on the receipt); though perhaps the plaintiff has really taken over because he sees that he’s got to tell a new pack of lies. The magistrate now says �And why isn’t there a receipt from this Deios as well as the one from Geminos?’, and the plaintiff replies �While Geminos was alive I was relying on his good faith.’ This time the defendant intervenes in person, claiming that the dates do not fit, and saying �Why does he not produce this Deios?’ And that is what the magistrate orders: that Deios be produced, and within thirty days. So we do not get to a judgment but only to an adjournment, which is disappointing.

Schmidt in his dissertation⁷³ drew from this document what may be a correct conclusion about the role of advocates: that what was wanted was a skilful speech in correct legal phraseology rather than the whole conduct of the client’s case. But this is not the best text from which to draw that conclusion, because Palamedes is not restrained within the bounds of his set speech; he seems, indeed, to have been of high standard in both rhetorical and legal competence.

8. P.Oxy. 472 [ed. Grenfell, Hunt], c. AD 130. This papyrus⁷⁴ contains part, and not the beginning, of the speech of a defence advocate. Comparison with P.Oxy. 486 shows that it was pleaded before the epistrategos of the Heptanomia, and gives it a date c. 130, but the editors state that its writing is like that of P.Oxy. 237, of the reign of Caracalla. It is mysterious why something so ephemeral should have been available to be copied more than half a century after its delivery; one implication is, surely, that sometimes, anyhow, advocates worked to a written text, capable of surviving to be copied later. It does not look as if what we have is abbreviated, and it may have survived as a teaching example, though it is hardly, one would have thought, an exemplary specimen of advocacy: its form is a narratio and probatio combined, dealing with some very disparate charges - attempted poisoning and a mortgage fraud⁷⁵ - in what seems a confused way. But the confusion may have been deliberate in a way that we cannot now perceive, for the speaker deploys a rapid fire of specific and clearly expressed points about mortgage procedure and uses the standard devices of rhetoric, such as the rhetorical question, in a way that could have been very effective.⁷⁶ One device is directly reminiscent of Cicero: the speaker uses antikategoria, defending his client by offering the court an alternative culprit: â€?But if anybody did plot against him, his son is the most likely.’⁷⁷

9. BGU 136 [ed. Wilcken] (= M. Chr. 86), AD 135, records an

⁷³239 Schmidt, 39.

⁷⁴A small part of which = M. Chr. 235 (but not the part relevant to present purposes).

⁷⁵I.e. mixed â€?criminal’ and â€?civil’.

⁷⁶ Though it looks, from P.Oxy. 486, as if the epistrategos disappointingly referred the whole case back to the Prefect.

⁷⁷ Col. ii, lines 8-9. Cf. Cicero in the pro Vareno, quoted by Priscian, XII 6, 29: â€?ea caedes si potissimum crimini datur, detur ei cuia interfuit, non ei cuia nihil interfuit’: see, for the text, Crook in 56 Crook and Cloud. Cicero used an antikategoria in the pro Roscio, too. action on guardianship before an archidikastes, a former praefectus cohortis, â€?in Memphis, on the tribunal’ (epi tou bematos, but epi restored). The plaintiff, a woman suing through her husband as procurator ad litem, is represented by an advocate, who states her case (reported in oratio obliquaY she is the daughter of an eldest son who was entitled, by virtue of being eldest, to a double portion of his father’s - her grandfather’s - estate; but her father died while she was still under guardianship,^[188] and the defendants, her uncles, have taken everything and failed to provide her even with maintenance. The defendants have two advocates; it is not said that that is on the basis of one each, nor is it indicated how the job was divided between them. Their contention is that the plaintiffs father was a mule-driver in the public service (i.e. a contractor, not just a labourer) and left his affairs in such a mess that they had no option but to take them over: if the plaintiff wants to enter into her father’s estate she must reimburse them for their administrative expenses. The procurator ad litem intervenes in person^[189] to insist that his wife’s father was not a mule-driver; and then there is judgment. It is, however, as so often, a disappointment from our point of view, because it merely passes the issue back to the strategos of the nome: ^lhe shall investigate this, and if it is found that the defendants have taken over the paternal property of the plaintiff on this ground he will see that it is restored to her.’ Why that investigation into matters of fact could not have been carried out before the present court is quite unclear.

10. P.Mil.Vogl. 98 [ed. Arangio-Ruiz],^[190] c. AD 138-9, reports proceedings heard by the eklogistes of the Arsinoite nome acting as iudex datus by the Prefect; but there have, it appears, been proceedings before the Prefect himself, and it is those that the report first briefly records. The plaintiffs (we do not learn who they are) were represented by an advocate named Kastor. They were suing a former village scribe, represented by ton synestekoton autoi rhetoron �the advocates (note the plural) standing at his side’, on the charge that he had acquired real estate in the area of his administration, contrary to the

111. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 19 Gnomon,^[191] by the dodge of putting it in the name of his mother-in-law. That was the case put by Kastor (reported in oratio obliqua)·. the other side’s reply - we are not told how it was divided between the two or more advocates - was that the lady, being well-off, had made the purchases on her own account. The Prefect had said �I must have a report on the facts: whether the property was bought while the defendant was village scribe, what its value was, and whether the lady bought for herself or not’. The eklogistes has now interrogated local persons on the basis of the Prefect’s questions, and, on the third heading, has received conflicting testimonies:^[192] witnesses hostile to the defendant claim that kata planen rhetoriken �by a (sc. typical) advocate’s trick’^[193] a wrong price for the purchase was entered in the land register. The rest of the papyrus seems to relate to the Prefect’s second heading, an inventory of the property, but it soon breaks off. We have evidently dropped in on the middle of another protracted wrangle about, basically, administrative law, and the argument has been purely on the facts; but we do not hear how the conflicting testimonies were evaluated or whether advocates had any hand in that process. The plane rhetorike phrase suggests an aspect of the society’s evaluation of advocates!

11. BGU 2070, etc. [ed. Maehler], 130s and 140s AD. Under this heading brief reference must be made to a group of documents comprising what has come to be known as the â€?Drusilla-Prozess’,^[194] in which a prominent participant is an advocate named Kallinikos.^[195] The case was a dispute between a woman named Tertia Drusilla and one C. lulius Agrippianus and, later, his son C. lulius Agrippinus (i.e. the parties were, this time, Roman citizens). The subject-matter was return of properties seized as hypothec for non-repayment of a loan. Most of the documents record proceedings before the iuridicus at Alexandria. All that there is space here to say about this huge dossier is that at every stage, certainly in all the litigation and probably behind the petitions, there are advocates at work, sometimes more than one per party.⁸⁶ And Kallinikos is of great interest: he seems to have been the widow Drusilla’s standby and factotum - her â€?attorney’, so to speak; for in this one we are in a very well-heeled milieu.

12. P.Mich. inv. no. 148 verso [ed. Youtie],⁸⁷ AD 146. Three cases are reported in this papyrus, in inverse chronological order. They were heard on 12 Nov. 155 and 18 Feb. and 10 Feb. 146. The subject-matter of all three is the right to recover property which, being owned in common, has been alienated by one co-owner. The important legal feature about this group is that they contain clear expressions of the principle of precedent in the form of ta epi ton homoion kekrimena â€?the things decided on the same basis’, i.e. the current of decisions, and, equally clearly, of the priority of edicts. The primary concern of the advocates in each case is to draw attention to the run of previous judgments.⁸⁸

In the earliest case⁸⁹ Neilos and Sarapion, rhetores for the plaintiffs, eipan â€?said’, and what they said is quoted in oratio recta. It is not explained how they did that, though presumably not in unison: at a later point we find Neilos on his own. They give a narratio and request judgment: they quote a recent decision by a gymnasiarchos. Dorion and Dionysios are the corresponding pair for the defendant, and they quote an edict. Neilos, with neat footwork, distinguishes: the edict applied in cases where people were partners (merely), whereas in the instant case they are also relatives. Further, he pleads, the Prefect Mamertinus⁹⁰ instructed a krites â€?judge’ to follow the majority of previous judgments, katakolouthesai tais pleiosi

⁸⁶ See the plural at BGU 2070, col. i, line 23.

⁸⁷ Published by H.C. Youtie in ZPE 27 (1977), 124ff.

⁸⁸ The latest in date (first on the papyrus) is least to the present purpose, and need not be further described.

⁸⁹ Last on the papyrus. It is not said where the proceedings took place: perhaps in the same place as the second-earliest, which comes before it on the papyrus; in that case, in the gymnasion at Xois. Nor are we told who the judge was; and the papyrus breaks off in the middle of argument.

⁹⁰ Praef. Aeg. 133-7.

III. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 81 krisesi, and that is what the gymnasiarchos had done in the case he quoted just now. There, unfortunately, things break off; one gets the impression that Neilos knew what he was up to.

The middle document reports a case heard eight days later in the gymnasion at Xois before a former agoranomos acting as iudex datus by the Prefect. The facts are not - for us - quite clearly set out by the advocates, but the general run is clear. The plaintiff has two advocates, of whom one, Herakleidas, leads with a narratio and a request for judgment, and the other, Lykarion, adds the legal argument, i.e. the quotation of precedent. Isidoros, advocate for the defendant, counters with a Prefectorial edict.^[196] Apollodoros is a second advocate for the defendant, and there seems even to be a third, named Areios. In answer to Isidoros, Herakleidas repeats the precedent adverted to by his colleague Lykarion, but quotes it differently, which sounds like a bit of sharp arguing, especially when he follows it by �stretching a point’,^[197] claiming that to go against a sententia of a iudex who was datus by the Prefect is tantamount to going against the Prefect’s own decision. The judge orders various precedents to be read, and Lykarion intervenes to say: �On the 16th of this very month Klaudios Hierax, archidikastes, made a ruling in a comparable case, peri homoias hypotheseos'. will you kindly follow it?’ After some further altercation the judge delivers his sententia, and it does expressly follow that of Klaudios Hierax. In this case it seems tempting to think that we can distinguish, for once, between the roles of a pair of advocates: Herakleidas the teller of the tale, Lykarion the stern, alert quoter of precedent. In any event, they will have been a formidable firm.

13. P.Ryl. 75 [ed. Johnson, Martin, Hunt], AD 150 or after,^[198] is a short collection, made for what purpose we do not know, but quite likely for the use of an advocate, of precedent-forming decisions by Prefects (two by (L.) Munatius (Felix), AD 150 and one by M. Petronius Mamertinus, AD 133-7) about cessio bonorum to avoid being sold up for private debt. In each of the first two cases, which were on the same day, the bankrupts were present, presumably as petitioners seeking permission to cede, but they had advocates. The advocates appear to have done nothing but say formally �He is bankrupt: he cedes’, but that is meth’hetera �after other matter’, and there is evidently abbreviation, so they may have pleaded, even at length. In the second case the advocate for the creditors is made to say with equal brevity epexechresato ta heautou �he totally used up his property’. The Prefect then called for investigation of the facts, so that was not the end of the matter; but the puzzle is why advocates were needed and how bankrupts paid for them.

14.P.Tebt. 287 [ed. Grenfell, Hunt, Goodspeed] (= W. Chr. 251),⁹⁴ 160s AD, before, probably, the iuridicus'. in this papyrus the fullers and dyers of the Arsinoite nome appeal in court against excessive taxation. They have appealed before and had judgment in their favour, but a new exaction has been made and they are back again. The text begins with a summary of the proceedings of the preceding (first) day. The tradesmen seem to have had two advocates: the first, named Longinos, gave a straightforward narratio of the position to date,⁹⁵ and the second, Protarchos, took at once an additional point about the Prefect having endorsed the previous judgment in their favour. Apparently that day’s proceedings ended with the judge ordering an adjournment so that the eklogistes could be heard. There follows the record of the resumed hearing, which the first advocate begins in much the same way. Someone then reads the protocol endorsed by the Prefect, whereupon the judge delivers a ruling, though one cannot really tell what it was: it looks rather like another â€?passing of the buck’, this time to the epistrategos - any procrastination, perhaps, rather than let potential tax revenue be lost. One may speculate, though not conclusively, on the respective roles of the two advocates: a narratio man and a precedent expert? A leader and his junior?

15.P.Oslo 18 [ed. Eitrem, Amundsen], AD 162, is the conclusion of a case before a certain Mounatios.⁹⁶ An advocate named Kanopos son of Dorion engages in an acrimonious- sounding exchange with the judge, in oratio recta. It is difficult to translate because the matter at issue is obscure, the dialogue

⁹⁴ In Wilcken’s half of the Chrestomathie because (correctly) regarded as administrative law.

⁹⁵In oratio recta.

⁹⁶ The editors suggest L. Munatius Felix, Praef. Aeg. 150-1; in 162 he would, of course, strictly have been ex-Prefect.

III. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 83 is allusive, and the lacunas are crippling, but it would be a pity not to try to convey the flavour of this vivid, if tiny, piece: details, in what follows, may not be right. �Kanopos, son of Dorion, rhetor, on behalf of [X], said: “I say that no such contract took place. The things said are simple. Your son was a (?) clerk. He stole certain things from my client. Produce him!” Mounatios said: “I know nothing of what you are talking about. For if ^[199] he were arrested as a murderer that is no reason why his father should be responsible.” Kanopos, son of Dorion, rhetor, said: “Let him swear that he did not make a contract, producing the son.” Mounatios said: “You ask for production and for an oath unjustly.”^[200] Ptolemaios son of Diodoros:^[201] “I have produced.” 2nd (year) of the Ailioi Antoninos and Oueros, Kaisares, Lords, Phamenoth.’^[202]

16.P.Catt. recto [ed. Grenfell, Hunt, Meyer] (= M. Chr. 372 = Meyer, JP 22, in part), latest doc. AD 165.^[203] This is another dossier, containing a series of decisions^[204] relating to the rule that marriage of soldiers is null and void. Seven cases are quoted, though the piece of papyrus begins with the very end of the first. In case 2, of AD 117, a Roman citizen woman, Lucia Macrina, petitions the Prefect �through (dia) Phaneios, rhetor’,^[205] maintaining that she seeks to recover a depositum from the estate of her late husband, who was a soldier. The Prefect sees this as a �dodge’ for concealing what was really dowry, and therefore void, and therefore unrecoverable. He is firm in rejecting it.

The next case is at Coptos, dated AD 135, before a hiereus kai archidikastes, one Ulpius Asclepiades, formerly prefect of Cohors II Hispanorum. An Egyptian woman sues Cassius Gemellus, eques Vocontiorum, for two sums totalling 700 drachmas. Her advocate^[206] pleads that the sums were a loan; the cavalryman’s two advocates reply^{[207] [208] simply that she regards herself as married to him and it is her dowry that she seeks to recover, but that is void because soldiers’ marriages are void. They add some counter-claims too fragmentary to be intelligible. The woman’s advocate repeats the claim that the sums are loans, and the two receipts are read out. On some basis that we cannot assess, the judge apparently says: �The first sum was a loan and must be repaid, but the second purported to be dowry and is therefore irrecoverable.’ Gemellus intervenes in person to ask about his counter-claim, and the judge says he must produce valid evidence if that is to be listened to.}

In the fourth case, of AD 115, before the Prefect (who consults meta ton nomikon �with the law-specialists’ (plural)), a soldier petitions apparently without an advocate; in the fifth, of the same year, a woman petitions with an advocate; in the sixth and latest, of AD 165, before the Prefect, a man and a woman with Roman names (though the man is also an Alexandrian citizen) appear in an adjourned case, just for judgment. The Prefect afterwards interrogates the man and they have an altercatio (in oratio recta, this); there is no sign of advocates. Finally a case is reported of AD 136 before the idiologos·. there are two (male) plaintiffs with one advocate, Apollonios presbyteros (�senior’), and one defendant, Cornelia, with two persons who peristantai autei, i.e. her advocates. We are told that one of them said this and that and the other said something else, but it is not apparent why two were needed.

17. SB 7558 [ed. Boak] (= HE 260), AD 173.¹⁰⁶ This document,¹⁰⁷ from Karanis, is familiar in another context, the privileges afforded by citizenship of Antinoopolis. The main text is a petition to the epistrategos of the Arsinoite nome for relief from guardianship, but it appends reports of other proceedings as precedents, including a case dated AD 148. That report, which alone concerns us, begins, after the date: â€?And Eudaimon son of Hermaios having been summoned ek biblidiou “on a written petition”, Dionysios^[209] having appeared and the petition submitted by him having been read, Philotas^[210] said “Where did

III. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 85 the man who appointed Eudaimon guardian come from?” Apollonios neoteros “junior”^[211] said “He was a Roman citizen domiciled at Ibio Panycteris.” Philotas said “He was within his rights to turn this down if the man who appointed him guardian was an Antinoite;^[212] for he is not liable to anyone to be guardian of his property except to an Antinoite and one living in the nomarchy.” Apollonios^[213] said “We will show that they did take on the guardianship and behaved in all ways as guardians.” ’ In that case, says the magistrate, I will appoint a judge and auditors. �But’, jumps in Apollonios neoteros, �it is not my client who took on the guardianship but his [ J.’^[214] For some reason the magistrate becomes testy at this point: �Is he an Antinoite? Is he an Antinoite?’ �Yes, and he asks for your good offices (euergesia).' The magistrate thereupon delivers judg­ment: �I will appoint a single judge and auditor to examine whether he took on the guardianship and go over the accounts.’ At which point a person called Thracidas, who sounds like a second defence advocate,^[215] intervenes to say: ^lhina me dokomen sesiopekenai “in order that we may not appear to have stayed silent” we certify that we owe X^[216]-and-a-half talents to the orphaness.’ Philotas: �What you have said is duly entered in the record.’ Then yet another person intervenes, one Dioskoros; he sounds like a second advocate for the plaintiff, and makes various pleas, which are granted.

This document prompts many questions. The advocates seem to know their job, though, as usual, it is hard to see why a plurality were needed and why the evidence they claim to possess is not brought on and settled by the magistrate; it is possible that these were in any event only preliminary proceedings to settle the issue, in the manner of the old �divided procedure’ of the ordo iudiciorum. Another intriguing problem is why the magistrate apparently �loses his cool’ at line 22. Perhaps we should infer that he was annoyed at what he thought were diversionary tactics by defendant’s advocate. And a final

question, unfortunately not capable of solution, is what was meant by �in order that we may not appear to have stayed silent’. Does it mean that Thracidas (assuming him to be one of the advocates) wants to make sure his clients are not, in subsequent proceedings, accused of having suppressed a material fact? (Incidentally, whatever that missing figure was, it was a very large sum.) Or does it mean �In order that I may not appear (to my clients) to have failed to take part’? Or is Thracidas a joint defendant,^[217] anxious to distance himself?

18. BGU 361 [ed. Krebs], AD 184.^[218] Columns II, from line 10, and III of this papyrus are a substantial extract from the court record of the strategos of the Heraclide district, recording proceedings �before the tribunal in the sebaste agora (Forum of Augustus)’. The subject-matter is, or includes, a complicated dispute about the sealing of a will. Both sides are represented by advocates, as well as one party, a minor, having his brother as ekdikos (= procurator)·, indeed, no less than four advocates are involved. Philostratos, rhetor, begins with a narratio, quoted in oratio recta, on behalf of the plaintiff, Kasios (and in his person, rather like a piece of logography): �I was entrusted by a relative, a Roman citizen, with a will, with instructions to have it opened upon his death; but the sealers, perhaps prevented by certain persons, avoided participating in an opening. Upon summons by you, four of them have now appeared, and also the nomikos ho ten oikonomian grapsas “who drew up the instrument”.’ So now on his client’s behalf he requests an immediate opening. Longos, rhetor, replies that the plaintiff is not a relative, as he will show; and there should be seven sealers: if the plaintiff can only rustle up four persons, ouk en oligoi hypopsiai geinomai �I find myself in a state of great suspicion’. Apollonius, rhetor, �added’ {prosetheken) something,^[219] but the run of things becomes from that point difficult to follow, though the argument goes on about seals and sealers, and another rhetor enters the arena. Nothing in the text enables us to deduce why all those advocates were needed.

19. P.Oxy. 237 [ed. Grenfell, Hunt], AD 186, is multiple in

III. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 87 character. Overall, it is an enormous petition to the Prefect by a certain Dionysia against her father,^[220] but it comprises partly (i) a historical narratio of a series of earlier actions between the same parties (in which, in Col. V before a strategos and Col. VI before the basilikos grammateus, they seem not to have advocates, though in the second of those the woman appears dia tou andros mou �through my husband’) and then (ii), in Cols. VII-IX, a dossier of precedents - previous actions, edicts, legal opinions - of various dates going back as far as AD 87, a hundred years. Considerable professional expertness is implied by that dossier,^[221] which may well have been assembled by, or for, Dionysia’s advocate: and a mass of old material, be it noted, was available. The basic subject-matter of the whole collection, as of the petition it supported, was whether a paterfamilias in Egypt had the right to terminate his daughter’s marriage against her will, which was the native Egyptian rule.

The first case quoted came before the Prefect in AD 128.^[222] The parties had advocates (one party perhaps two), whose remarks are recorded in oratio obliqua. The plaintiff appealed to a principle that only became settled Roman law by a rescript of Antoninus Pius,^[223] that a paterfamilias could not force his daughter to leave her husband if the marriage was bene concordans, harmonious: in this text the phrase is gynaikos oikeios pros auton echouses �if the woman is domestically disposed towards him’. A succession of Prefects of Egypt had already so ruled,^[224] and this one followed them. The second case came before an epistrategos in AD 134. The plaintiff, wishing to remove his daughter, has an advocate; the husband has, apparently, two, who plead precedent-forming decisions against the apanthropia �inhumanity’ of the Egyptian rule. The judge asks the woman, through an interpreter, whom she wishes to follow, and she replies �my husband’.

The third item harks back to AD 87.^[225] It is a case before the iuridicus about, actually, the right or otherwise of the the paterfamilias to withdraw dowry. The woman has her husband as procurator ad litem, and he does not seem to have an advocate; but the father has one, who pleads the Egyptian law with force, but is ignored by the judge, who engages in a colloquy with his client in person. The item that follows that is legally the most interesting, being the written prosphonesis �counsel’s opinion’ of a nomikos, one Ulpius Dionysodorus, former agoranomos, about the Greco-Egyptian law, given to an eparchos stolou �(?) praefectus cohortis’ acting as a judge. It does not, however, directly concern advocacy.

Dionysia’s dossier now turns, as one might say, to the offensive. In addition to several edicts^[226] there is a fragment of proceedings before the Prefect dated AD 151 (the latest), in which the defendant’s advocate clinches his case with a round allegation: his client’s summons to court is a mere attempt by the plaintiff to stave off a money claim. The Prefect concurs. Quite how that created precedent it is hard to see; but it affords a glimpse of an advocate in fighting form.

20. P.Oxy. 2340 [ed. Roberts], AD 192. This brief document is an item from a record-roll.^[227] It reports proceedings before a magistrate,^[228] being the appeal of a master-weaver against being nominated in place of someone else to an urban liturgy in Alexandria. His advocate addresses the court on his behalf,^[229] briefly, for few words are necessary; he takes one simple point, that men in his client’s position, with a factory under them, have in the past been exempted dia to chresimous einai toi tameioi �because they are useful to the treasury’. He asks for something - presumably a precedent - to be read. The �defendant’ (i.e. the man who nominated the appellant to the liturgy in place of himself) also has an advocate, who says: �Epimachos (his client, the �defendant’) says he (the appellant) is not a weaver but a perfumer, and a well-heeled one (euschemona).’ The judge does

III. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 89 not pursue that question of fact, but merely says that if the appellant is a weaver the precedents are on his side: he may in turn nominate someone else. Judgment rests expressly on the precedent: kata ta eph’homoion krithenta... toi autoi paradeig- mati chresasthai dunatai �in accordance with the decisions on a like basis... he may make use of the same example’. Perhaps that was all the judge needed to say, especially if his main concern was to get the liturgy done; but it seems odd that the point of fact left hanging could not have been settled by the calling of witnesses there and then, unless, of course, it was obvious to the judge, as it cannot be to us, that the �perfumer’ story was just a last desperate throw, a plane rhetorike\

21. BGU 15, Col. I [ed. Wilcken] (= W. Chr. 393), AD 194. This document is sufficiently important for our theme to be worth quoting entire. It is an extract from the record of the court of an epistrategos·, its subject-matter is, as in the previous case, an appeal against nomination to a liturgy.^[230] �From the record of proceedings of loulios Kouintianos, kratistos (= egregius), epistrategos, year 2 of Loukios Septimios Seoueros Perteinax Sebastos, 2 Mesore. After other matters: Pekysis son of Apynchis having been called and appeared, Diadelphos, rhetor, said: “Please call the village scribe of Neilopolis against whom ho hemeteros �our client’ complains.” He having been called and not appeared, Artemidoros, strategos,^[231] said: “Neilopolis does not have a village scribe, but only elders taking it in rotation.” Diadelphos, rhetor, said: “It has been ordered by successive Prefects that people must not be transferred from one village to another but only in their village.^[232] But because the village scribe is oppressing my client {toi synegoroumenoi) he has named him, being praktor argyrikon of his own village, to another liturgy. He claims, by reading the orders,^[233] to be not dragged from his own village to another.” Kointianos (sic) said: The strategos shall decide to refer to me whatever he finds to be part of my sphere.” ’^[234]

Yet again, officialdom seems to shy away from a clear decision. But the point of interest here concerning advocacy is that the appellant’s advocate advances a case which, as stated, is not correct in law: �only in their own village’ was not correct, though �not two liturgies at a time’ was correct.^[235] It would have been fascinating to see argument on that, but the village elders do not seem to have had an advocate. It may just have been a �try-on’ - which succeeded in the sense that the judge did not challenge the loose formulation. But the advocate seems also to have been inadequately briefed: he called for the appearance of the village scribe of Neilopolis presumably because that was what his brief instructed him to do. It must have been a facer for him when it turned out that there was no such defendant to summon: in the circumstances, he recovered rather well!^[236]

22.P.Mich. 365 [ed. Youtie, Pearl], AD 194, is another minute of proceedings before an epistrategos, not the same man as in No. 21 but probably his successor. As in No. 17, privileges of citizens of Antinoopolis are being jealously petitioned for and insisted on. The petitioner in this short protocol is one C. lulius Ptolemaios. He is present, but has an advocate, who narrates (recorded in oratio recta), a little incoherently, that his client (houtos �this man’) �is an Antinoite; and having suffered violence and assault kai ergolabian^[237] he petitioned you against Chairemon, son of Maron; and when you summoned (Chaire- mon) through the usher Ptolemaios, since, then, he is not here, we ask that...’. The advocate answers a question or two, and gets the decision asked for, namely for his opponent to be sent to Antinoopolis for trial.

23.P.Oxy. 899 [ed. Grenfell, Hunt] (= W. Chr. 361), AD 200, is a petition, vast and complex, by a woman claiming exemption from the requirement to cultivate certain lands.^[238] It is couched in rhetorical and emotional language: the question who wrote and got up such petitions will be considered presently, when this document will recur. But in the course of the petition the petitioner quotes proceedings of AD 154 (over forty years earlier)

III. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 91 as a precedent. In those proceedings (we do not know before what court) the petitioner had an advocate, who gave a brief and business-like narratio (recorded in oratio recta) and referred to precedents. The judge caused them, ta epi ton toiouton kekrimena �the things decided on the like basis’, to be read out, and gave judgment accordingly. This advocate did a good job; but, as Katzoff notes, the same issue was raised and decided three times in the years 142-54.

24. P.Stras. 22 [ed. Preisigke] (= M. Chr. 374 = Meyer, JP 54 = Bruns⁷ 192 = FIRA I 85 = HE 261), AD 207, lines 10-24. The papyrus is a well-known collection of precedents relating to the (new) Severan rules on longi temporis praescriptio.¹³³ Lines 10-24 are a brief summary, in oratio recta nevertheless, of a case before the Prefect; they have just one interesting feature, that the Prefect asks the advocate,¹³⁹ rather as a modern judge might ask counsel, â€?What do you reply to (the point about) the length of possession?’ It sounds as if the magistrate were treating the advocate as colleague and amicus curiae. However, that impression cannot be sustained, for the magistrate’s question is only an interrogation as to a point of fact: the advocate at once concedes it, and that determines the judgment.

25. SEG XVII 759, AD 216. This¹⁴⁰ is an inscription, not a papyrus, and is included as being one of the few pieces of evidence that the Egyptian material is not anomalous. It is â€?bilingual’¹⁴¹ (which only occurs in our papyri much later on), in that its preamble and rubrics - â€?Aristaenetus d(ixit)’, and so on - are in Latin, but all the speeches are recorded (in oratio recta) in Greek, including the remarks of the emperor. For these proceedings take place at Antioch before the emperor Caracalla. The ultimate subject-matter is the rights of the inhabitants of a Syrian village called Goharia¹⁴² in their temple of Zeus Hypsistos¹⁴³ - no doubt a source of income - as against a certain manceps â€?contractor’, who is alleged to be engaged in a

¹³⁸ Discussion: Katzoff, holding that this collection â€?is intended for presentation in court’.

¹³⁹ meth’ hetera â€?after other matter’ (not quoted).

¹⁴⁰ Published by P. Roussel and F. De Visscher in Syria 23 (1942-3), 17-94 (date of publication 1945) = AE 1947, 182. Discussion: 53 Crook, 82-5 and 142-3; subsequently 153 Kunkel, whose text = SEG XVII 759 and is used here; 300 Williams.

¹⁴¹ As nos. 33,34, and 36, below.

¹⁴² If that is the correct form.

¹⁴³ On the walls of which they inscribed this text.

�take-over’. The part of the proceedings recorded on the stone is, however, a procedural argument whether the defendant has not been made to appear before the highest court in the land unfairly and contrary to rule.

The plaintiff villagers are represented by one Aurelius Carzeus, claiming to be their defensor·, but he has an advocate, as does the defendant.¹⁴⁴ In Col. I defendant’s advocate opens the proceedings with the single word paragraphomai â€?I demur’.¹⁴⁵ His opposite number, addressing the emperor without title or ceremony, says â€?You ordered the cognitio to take place’, but the defence advocate is not too overawed to motivate his demurrer fully and even floridly, with rhetorical questions: â€?Appeals occur by rule: either the governor approves the appeal and it comes before your tribunal, or, if he has not accepted it, how can the case be bringable (sc. before you)? After many judgments and decisions you were petitioned among the requests of the Goharieni. Being not a syndikos nor a delegate but only a personal complainant the fellow has inserted an appeal so as to get you as judge instead of the governor. And you said to him “If you wish me to hear I will hear”. We have protested against this from the outset, and now, (?) when we were proceeding by the court rule(?),¹⁴⁶ we demur to the suit because they have no right of appeal, nor can have, to your tribunal.’ The advocate for the plaintiffs tries to distract attention from the damaging allegation that his side slipped in this petition to the emperor in the midst of other matter by a sentimental reminder that his clients are georgoi hoi soi â€?your peasants’ and by saying that Kassios¹⁴⁷ had not given their opponents sanction for a demurrer because they â€?had not complained before’.¹⁴⁸

After a brief lacuna of three lines, at the beginning of Col. II the emperor is interrogating the defendant’s advocate: �Are you, then, saying he (sc. Carzeus) did not appeal?’ �They do not have an appeal, for it is not open to them to have one.’ And then come — it is remarkable - some more of the ipsissima uerba of that

¹⁴⁴ On the advocates, more presently; and on â€?representation’ see Ch. IV, excursus 2, below.

¹⁴⁵ I.e. to the case being heard in this court; cf. no. 35, below, p. 104.

¹⁴⁶ If that is the meaning of the phrase.

¹⁴⁷Whoever he was: perhaps the governor of Syria.

¹⁴⁸I.e. â€?in time’?

III. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 93 reputedly terrifying emperor:¹⁴⁹ â€?Look, now, let me say a word according to my own view even in this case. He didn’t appeal, he didn’t put in a complaint, and this matter was not spoken of before the governor: “I complain of you (memphomai se) before the emperor”, he says. Are you not willing for me to hear the case?’ That challenge puts the defendant’s advocate agonisingly on the spot: what can he say, to the emperor, but the one word, ego (meaning here â€?of course’)? The emperor proceeds to surprise us further: â€?If I were in a hurry to get away from here I should say “the demurrer is allowed”.¹⁵⁰ En tisin oun memphomai “in what, then, am I criticised?” ’¹⁵¹ The emperor is evidently determined to proceed, and the plaintiffs advocate (another surprise) says â€?I shall speak for under half an hour’,¹⁵² and takes off into a high-flown rhetorical topos about piety (eusebeiaY. â€?This dispute is about piety, and to the peasantry as to yourself there is nothing more important than piety. Hence they have confidence in the present case, suing (agonizomenoi) before a most pious monarch and judge.’ He follows this with the beginnings of his narratio, laid out on a substantial scale; and there the papyrus breaks off.

On many grounds scholars have suspected there to be more to this document than meets the eye - and in ways and to an extent that would nullify its typicality, and so utility, for our present purpose. To begin with, these are proceedings before the emperor himself: this is the only one of our set of documents to have that distinction. Yet the parties are as humble a set as could well be imagined: it is true that the emperor is on circuit, but these are not even the big-shots of Antioch. When it comes, however, to the advocates, Kunkel was sharp-eyed: the advocate for the plaintiff was one Egnatius Lollianus, while the defendant’s man was called lulianus Aristaenetus;¹⁵³ and of

¹⁴⁹ Not, alas, without translation difficulties.

¹⁵⁰ I.e. â€?It is a correct demurrer, and appeal to the emperor would not normally be allowed except by permission of the governor; but, after all, I am actually on the spot, so who can really complain if I, the supreme judge, choose to hear the case?’ This is an equitable argument; and it springs from the emperor, whence it should spring.

¹⁵¹ That meaning would be consistent with what is said in n. 150, immediately above, but it is not certain that those words can bear that sense, for, a moment ago, memphomai was middle voice, not passive. Perhaps â€?at what point do I take up the case?’; but dubiety remains.

¹⁵² Cf. no. 28, below, p. 97.

¹⁵³ In the preamble the names are garbled, but the body of the text makes the identification of the one highly and of the other reasonably probable. A man called

them, as Kunkel showed, something is known independently. The former was a senator who had a distinguished career later and was destined in particular to be a noted orator, the latter probably to be identified with another senator also recorded epigraphically as an orator. It is a reasonable guess that the two men were comites Augusti accompanying Caracalla on his travels and forming part of his consilium. So the humble litigants were furnished with advocates not just socially out of their normal range but rhetorically as well, so that, at least, we should see the oratorical niveau here as a specimen of metropolitan rather than provincial standards.

But how did the litigants acquire those grand fellows? Wynne Williams went further than Kunkel, arguing that the whole case was a put-up job, a charade laid on for the pleasure of the emperor, a connoisseur of oratory, at the expense of the hapless litigants, who were being made sport of by their betters: �All right, I’ll hear the miserable little case and we’ll have a bit of fun to liven up this ghastly place: you act for the plaintiffs and you defend, and see what bricks you can make with this paucity of straw!’ The strongest ground in favour of that picture would be the relaxed and indulgent behaviour of an emperor not noted historically for such qualities; the other grounds adduced are not strong. For Lollianus announcing �I’ll only take half an hour’, which some have thought too insouciant for a real case, there is a parallel of 50 years later in No. 28 below, where flippancy is not to be suspected; and for his intervention hard upon his opponent’s single word paragraphomai there is a parallel in No. 35 below, which shows that that was the way it was done. As for the florid appeal to pietas, far from being tongue-in-cheek it matches a much more famous utterance by Caracalla himself, the preamble to the Constitutio Antoniniana.^[239]

In the general light of what has already been seen in the papyrus evidence another rationale for these proceedings may be suggested. Given a snap decision of the emperor to hear a case, what would follow? The papyri give colour to the supposition that there were advocates around the conuentus

III. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 95 whom a litigant might brief for proceedings before the magistrate: a fortiori, when the emperor suddenly took a case advocates must have had to be conjured up at immediate notice. Present, on this occasion, were two metropolitan advocates in the emperor’s entourage: what more natural than that he should offer them, or they offer themselves, gratis, in an emergency? Perhaps it was even an understood thing, like �Is there a doctor in the house?’, that if an advocate was present and a litigant in need of one, noblesse oblige operated. The two �stars’ may well have dumbfounded their humble clients by the slick floridity of their performance; but acquaintance with our other material shows that that was only a matter of degree. There is, then, no need to envisage a cruel joke in this text, but rdther the ordinary workings of the judicial system coping with pretty unusual circumstances. And a splendid example is furnished of the emperor’s role in that system: he himself candidly admits that stricto sensu that demurrer is good, but it is, after all, a technical point, and here is he, ready to cut through the technicalities, the one man in the whole Roman empire who can - so, come along, gentlemen! And after all, the lowly Goharenians, presumably victorious, do not seem to have felt humiliated: for they wrote it all up on the wall of the temple the emperor had saved for them.

26. SB 5676 [orig. ed. Gradenwitz], c. AD 232. There are only eighteen lines to this papyrus fragment, and of the court proceedings only seven, with the beginnings missing, but it must be quoted for the one important, though not with certainty comprehensible, remark it contains. The subject-matter seems to be an appeal to the strategos of the Hermopolite nome, arising out of a decision by the Prefect, in previous proceedings, to declare null and void a hypothec on certain property: it is those proceedings that are now quoted. Even in the course of this fragment at least three advocates are in evidence. First, an advocate asks the Prefect to summon certain persons, who duly appear, whereupon one of the parties, apparently, makes a statement in person. The Prefect asks a question, to which the advocate replies; and then the latter makes an astonishing remark, saying of someone or other �He is very powerful; he is the rhetor of the epistrategos, and I am unable to speak pros auton “against him” there, but only before you.’ There are, subsequently, more questions and answers between the

magistrate and the parties in person, and more advocates intervene; but the interest is in the remark just quoted. What does it imply? Is it evidence that in Egypt advocates were already limited to a particular â€?Bar’ or â€?Circuit’?¹⁵⁵ (i.e. â€?I cannot appear against him there because I am a member of your Bar’); or does it mean that this advocate is - or claims to be - scared of speaking against the powerful man in his own harena (as the younger Pliny might have called it)?

27. P.Oxy. 3117 [ed. Rea], (?) c. AD 235,¹⁵⁶ records a case about succession heard before an epitropos (procurator, but the epistrategos may be meant). The plaintiffs are one Chaeremon and a woman litigating through him: he, at least, is certainly present. The protocol begins in the standard way: “Year 1, 20 Pauni, in the Oxyrhynchite nome, before (pro) the tribunal’, and the advocate¹⁵⁷ for the plaintiffs), named Demetrios, at once makes the formal request for the adversary to be called. The latter duly appears, and, Demetriou archomenou legein â€?the moment Demetrius began to speak’, Asklepios, the defence advocate, interposes an application for postponement: it was probably the exactly correct moment to do so. Demetrios replies, sounding rather cross, that all those evasions were tried yesterday, including the tale that the defendant needed time to didaxai ton rhetora â€?brief the advocate’,¹⁵⁸ and that the judge has already ruled that today the defendant must answer. The epitropos asks a question or two and is answered by the parties in person; and then Demetrios embarks on an extensive narratio, unfortunately so damaged as to be recoverable only by conjecture.

28.P.Stras. 41 [ed. Presigke] + P.Lips. 32 [ed. Mitteis] (= M. Chr. 93), c. AD 250, is an extensive document, though with a bad gap in the middle. Like No. 29 below it seems more expansive than the usual �extracts from proceedings’. The speeches are given in oratio recta. The subject-matter is in the domain of succession, concerning a fideicommissum of part of an

¹⁶⁵As suggested on p. 63, above.

¹⁵⁶ The problems of dating are gone into by the editor; no harm will be done by accepting the date suggested above.

¹⁵⁷ The Latin letter â€?r’ is used as an abbreviation for rhetor throughout, followed by eipen and then oratio recta.

¹⁵⁸ The word â€?not’ at the end of line 9 (of which all that can be read is a â€?dotted’ first letter) gives an awkward sense: they are surely appealing for time because they claim they do have to assemble many documents.

III. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 97 inheritance or a fixed sum in lieu, which is alleged never to have been made over; but most of the surviving part is about whether the defendant should be allowed a stay of proceedings, as in No. 27 above, on the ground that she has not got certain vital biblia �papers’ available to her - she was, she says �arrested off the ferry’ and has been in custody in the police-station. Notwithstanding which she has somehow acquired two advocates.^[240] In fact, there seem to be at least four advocates involved, and in addition the plaintiff, aunt of the defendant, has someone synestos autei �standing in with (i.e. supporting) her’. The judge is one Hermanubis, whose status is not discoverable.

The document begins^[241] in the standard way: “Year [ ], 28 Pharmouthi, in Antinoopolis, before (pro) the tribunal, Ammonios, rhetor, said....’ Ammonios, the plaintiffs first advocate, calls for certain persons, including Aretous, the main defendant, to appear, which they do. The defendant’s first advocate, Antoninos, says: �Aretous ta biblia autes enthade ouk echei “...doesn’t have her papers here’”; and her second advocate, Horigenes junior, says: �We ask for a day for the preparation of our case.’ Ammonios says: �I don’t need papers for the present case, for enquiry will elicit [...] from witnesses and the conduct of our opponent, so that there is no justification for putting off the judgment until tomorrow. Peri de hou dikazomai dia bracheon se didaxo “And as to what my case is about I will inform you (sing.) in few words”.’^[242] Ammonios continues this exordium for a bit, and follows it with a narratio, extensive and rhetorically conceived. He is followed by the plaintiffs second advocate, his colleague Sarapion, who prosetheke �took up the tale’ with what it may be fair to regard as the probatio,^[243] though it really goes over the narratio again, and it is not apparent why two advocates were needed. There follows a further attempt by the defendant’s advocates to get an adjournment, involving an altercatio with the judge, who says they do not need these documents, to which one of them replies

obstinately that they must have them hina didaskomen �to enable us to plead’.^[244]

Then comes the long lacuna, and when the protocol resumes^[245] we are in the midst of an interrogation by the judge. Two witnesses are questioned: one can’t remember much (�I am an old man’), the other anything. After that there is a general wrangle, at the end of which the magistrate grants the requested stay till the morrow, but with a stern warning to the defendant to appear, reinforced by Ammonios demanding that she be retained in custody, �for there was difficulty getting the defendants here’, while Antoninos insists that his clients have offered bail. �Let them produce it’, growls the judge, and there we break off.

29. SB 7696 [ed. Skeat, Wegener], c. AD 250. The preamble to this extensive court-room argument^[246] is lost. It seems, like No. 28 above, rather fuller than the usual �extract of court record’.^[247] The speeches are given in oratio recta. The court is that of the Prefect, the subject the nomination of villagers to the liturgy of kosmetes in the town of Arsinoe. The parties are, thus, on the one hand the senate of Arsinoe, probably just in the person of its current prytanis �chairman’, and on the other certain villagers complaining that they ought not to have been nominated to such a liturgy. The notable feature of the document is the number of advocates occurring in it: the senate of Arsinoe has four, the villagers as a body seem to have two,^[248] but three particular villagers have another man who calls himself their synegoros·.^[249] and the prytanis takes part in the debate. The Prefect asks many questions, and all present seem to intervene ad lib.·. �The discipline... was apparently not over-strict, and an advocate who has just been asked a direct question by the Prefect is not infrequently anticipated by a colleague or even an opponent.’^[250] There is thus no extended

Ill. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 99 narratio, though the editors detect â€?in some of the longer utterances... some echoes of the forensic eloquence of Greco-Roman Egypt in the third century AD’.¹⁷⁰ (Another remarkable, if for our purposes less relevant, feature is that the Prefect keeps consulting his consilium, apparently on the spot, without adjournment.)

It is the synegoros of the three villagers who plays the ace: â€?I now read a law of the emperor Severus, me dein apo ton kometon eis tas metropoleitikas agesthai leitourgeias “that it is not allowed for persons from among the villagers to be brought to liturgies of the metropolis”.’ One of the advocates for the other side does his best to fish out a trump to play: â€?The laws are indeed to be held in awe and reverence... but it'is the need of the city up to which (alone) the law has force.’ He appeals, too, to alleged decisions by earlier Prefects. But against a plain imperial constitution his task is hopeless. There follows an episode celebrated in studies of the Severan period. The Prefect asks one of the city’s advocates what he has to say in the face of the constitution of Severus, and the advocate replies: â€?Severus laid down the law in Egypt when the cities were still prosperous’, to which the Prefect retorts (he may not have been right) that prosperity and decline apply to city and village alike. Only the beginning of the Prefect’s judgment survives; but it is clear that he is not going to have any nonsense about equitable considerations when there is a constitution to enforce.¹⁷¹

The impression made by this document is of business-like, sensible proceedings and alert and competent advocates; but nothing in it gives any clue to why there had to be so many.

30. P.Stras. 5 [ed. Preisigke], AD 262, though a petition, contains an account of proceedings before the Prefect.¹⁷² The subject-matter is far from clear, but seems to relate to violence allegedly done to the petitioner by some revenue officers. The case was heard at the conuentus â€?in Little Hermoupolis, before (pro) the tribunal’. The petitioner¹⁷³ is claimed by his advocate to be a poor, elderly countryman; yet he has this advocate, and the advocate is, astonishingly, an archidikastes â€?in post’

¹⁷⁰The editors, ad loc.

¹⁷¹ Contrary to 239 Schmidt, 60-2, the Prefect is not here influenced by anyone’s rhetoric - and he consults his consilium.

Unfortunately a good many letters are missing at the end of each line.

¹⁷³ There is no indication that he is present, though the defendant (or one of them) is.

(enarchos), though also a rhetor.^[251] his narratio begins Hermon enarchos archidikastes rhetor eipen.... It is a tear-jerking performance (recorded in oratio recta): his client has suffered �things unworthy of the peace that you protect on behalf of all of us’; he has suffered violence para pantas tous nomous �beyond all the laws’; his opponents have seized the chance to attack him �in contempt for the age of the man’; they have �made him anastatori (�desolate’); �and so he flees to you and the laws, and his petition is that you activate the police (irenarchoi), [?so that] if they have harmed the old man and the imperial treasury in their folly, they may be sent before your dikasteriori,^[252] And that, in effect, seems to be the Prefect’s judgment, if restitution is not made immediately: �Theodotos Prefect of Egypt said: “I will send to the strategos and the irenarchoi, so that if anything has been taken by force it shall be restored at once, [...] to my dikasteriori".’^[253]

About this text the mystery is why an archidikastes appeared on behalf of a peasant. He was a rhetor: was he, then, perhaps, the only man �on call’ about the conuentus that morning? If so, the rhetoric can be seen particularly clearly as a convention of the genre, and the next two texts may help to confirm that.

31. P.Mert. 26 [ed. Bell, Roberts], AD 274, is another text relevant to the relationship between petitions and court proceedings. In it, a woman, appearing in person, presents a petition to the exegetes of the Oxyrhynchite nome;^[254] but the petition is actually made orally in court by her advocate, and is highly rhetorical and emotional. One would scarcely have thought that necessary, because the woman is only asking for a guardian to be appointed to her orphan nephew, and there is no dispute as to the person chosen.^[255] Yet the advocate goes on (in oratio recta) about how the child is komidei nepios, a �tiny tot’, whose parents have died apo tinos phreikodous nosou �from a ghastly illness’. Perhaps the chosen guardian, the petitioner’s

III. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 101 brother, present in court, was reluctant to serve; but perhaps, simply, as suggested just above under No. 30, a degree of emotional embellishment was the stock-in-trade of third-century advocacy, affecting the language of petitions as well as of court proceedings. Some more tear-jerking will be met with in No. 32 immediately below.

32. P.Thead. 15 [ed. Jouguet], AD 280-1, is a record, in oratio recta, of proceedings before the strategos of the Arsinoite nome, acting as iudex datus by the Prefect. It concerns some orphans whose sheep have allegedly been stolen. Their advocate, Isido­ros,¹⁷⁹ begins thus: â€?Artemis happens to be these two months [?dead], and her orphan children come as suppliants before your tribunal. They come as suppliants on the order of the illustrious Prefect, who has referred the affair to you in order that you may repress violence. And violence is what we have numerous times petitioned against, as is testified in your record:¹⁸⁰ Syrion after the death of the children’s father cast his eye upon the animals left by their father - for he was a shepherd - being sixty in number, and stole them. And you in indignation ordered Syrion in person to produce in court the shepherds with whom the children’s father worked and Annes and his brother, and so, after not a shadow of counter-argument (had been offered) the flock was restored¹⁸¹ to the children. But look what Syrion does: he flouts the orders made by you and those made by the Prefecture. And therefore now once again we testify, so that you may once again order him to be brought and to give back to the infants what he stole.’ At that point there intervenes an epitropos,¹⁸² who appears to be acting for the defendant and declares that he is absent on fiscal business and will, of course, answer as soon as he returns. â€?Oh well,’ says Isidoros with malicious insinuation â€?if he is a fugitive from justice... (ean oun phygodikos ei...).’ However, the strategos seems to take little notice of the interruption, saying merely enteuchtheis horon doso â€?if approached I will give a rule’¹⁸³

¹⁷⁹ Described twice (which rules out scribal error) as apo synegorion, which ought to mean â€?ex-advocate’, perhaps of the fisc, as, e.g., in IG III 1, add., no. 712a; compare ^synagoreusanta, AE 1946, no. 180.

¹⁸⁰ The meaning is a bit uncertain.

¹⁸¹1.e. judgment was given that it be restored.

¹⁸² Whatever that term meant: not here, as in no. 27, above (see p. 96), acting as a Judge, so perhaps really just a procurator or agent, see LSJ⁹, s.v. epitropos.

¹⁸³ For this phrase compare the angareta-inscription from Phrygia, SEG XIII 625 (in °ur â€?secondary series’, p. 112 below), line 38.

- scarcely a helpful conclusion to the proceedings from our point of view.

So the orphan children of a shepherd with sixty sheep have an advocate, and, what is more, he orates. The epigram of Martial, two hundred years earlier, comes to mind, about the man whose three she-goats have been stolen and his advocate brings in the whole of Roman history.^[256] But the more important thing to reflect on is the relation between this text and the previous one, No. 31. That was a petition, spoken in court, this is an argument held in court. In style and tone of argument they are so alike that it seems highly probable that the same sort of professionals composed them, i.e. the advocates.

33. P.Ryl. 653 [ed. Turner], AD 321. With this document we enter two new worlds, first, that of the �bilingual’ text,^[257] for in these records the magistrate talks in Latin (and Greek translations of the judgments are appended to the document) and the rubrics are in Latin, but the arguments remain in Greek. Secondly we are in the age of the �Later Roman Empire’. The purpose of going so far on in time is to bring home the continuity of advocacy and show the employment of advocates and their role in the legal order continuing essentially unchanged. In the present document, for example, the setting is an impoverished and remote world of villages on the edge of the desert, struggling against desiccation, yet there is advocacy* Perhaps, indeed, the fact that the villagers were illiterate and not speakers of the dominant languages of law and society made« the need for it all the greater.

It is difficult to grasp just what is going on in this case.^[258] The petitioners are some villagers of the village of, probably*; Theadelphia, accusing the inhabitants of another village of blocking an irrigation canal. The proceedings take place aft Arsinoe, in secretario �the (indoor) court’, before the governor of Aegyptus Herculea: the record is in oratio recta. Lines 2-10 are the speech of an advocate (his name is missing) on behalf of tous

III. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 103 synegoroumenous �my clients’, the petitioners. They entyn- chanousin dia tou parontos Arionos �appear through Arion who is present’: this Arion is probably one of their number acting as their procurator ad litem - he is not the advocate. �This man alone is left,’ says the advocate, �and two others with him.’^[259] The inhabitants of the village of Andromachis are ruining them by damming an irrigation canal. The magistrate d(ixit)·. �The praepositus pagi and the chomatepeiktai “dyke-inspectors”, such places as he shall judge... by heaping up of land... shall force them at once (iam iamque) to clear that place so that water....’ But now, lines 14-18, enters one Leontius, who dixit, a bit unsystematically, as follows: �The survivors and this man’s brothers, hyperkathemenoi hemin “being situated higher up than us”(?),^[260] and possessing only 20 arourai in the plain, are damming the stream and will not let the water be transmitted down to us. Since, therefore, it is proper (prosekei) that they should either yield the water to us, who will gladly assume the taxes for the 20 arourai - or, of course (delude), if they do dam up the water they should have our land and we cede it to them forthwith.’ The magistrate once more gives a ruling, having no truck with the proposal for an exchange: �The praepositus pagi shall see to it that those against whom charge is brought, drawing off sufficient water according to the land they possess, hand the remainder on to the land of your clients (susceptorum tuorum)^[261] so that they too may be able to irrigate the lands belonging to them.’

34. P.Thead. 13 [ed. Jouguet], AD 322-3, is another �bilingual’ document,^[262] almost contemporaneous with No. 33 above, of a case heard before the same governor of Herculea. The plaintiff is suing the praktores, who are not present and do not seem to be represented; the plaintiff is certainly represented by at least one advocate,^[263] whose pleading is recorded in oratio recta. When the advocate has delivered his petition the magistrate says: �If your client will name those who are oppressing him the exactor ciuitatis will see that he suffers no injustice from them.’

35. P.Col. VII 175 [ed. Bagnall, Lewis], AD 339. This item,^[264] the key text in the history of longissimi temporis praescriptio, is, more importantly for present purposes, perhaps the richest advocacy-papyrus in our whole sample, indispensable in spite of its late date. It records proceedings before the syndikos of Arsinoe, apparently as iudex datus by the Prefect, and concerns, once again, taxation. The petitioners are a pair of sisters trying to escape paying tax on a parcel of land which they have abandoned and which has been taken into cultivation, under compulsion, by certain villagers of Karanis, who are the respondents. The sisters have the husband of one of them as their entolikarios (.cognitor), and it is he, named Neilos, who is present. Each side has an advocate, and the speeches are given in oratio recta.^[265]

An advocate {rhetor) of the petitioners, after formal reading of the credentials of the cognitor, opens in combative style: �My clients (hai synegoroumenai), having been put to annoyance unwarrentedly and contrary to the laws over lands that do not appertain to them, have fled for refuge, by petition, to the Prefect; and now I shall recite what the Prefect said.’ As he begins to do so Col. I breaks off; when we pick up the text again he is in full cry: �... not loosely or at random did my clients submit their petition’ - but he gets no further, being interrupted by Alexandros, rhetor for the respondents, with the cry of paragraphomai �I demur’.^[266] Permission for the demurrer being granted, Alexandros launches into a full-scale oratorical performance, with an exordium, about how the adversaries have

Ill. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 105 told a pack of lies, followed by a summary statement of the imperial constitution on which he grounds his demurrer, all that being followed by a substantial narratio^[267] culminating in the formal recital - with permission - of the constitution de longissimi temporis praescriptione, his trump card, which he deploys to convince the syndikos that his opponents cannot now repudiate responsibility for the land in question. That, as we shall see, is a plane rhetorike with a vengeance.

There naturally follows argument as to how long the women’s father, their predecessor in title, had been in possession: more than forty years, taking the possessions together, claims Alexandros.^[268] At which point Theodoros, an advocate for the petitioners^[269] (telling a lie by implication about the chronology), initiates diversionary tactics with a sophism of his own, the �irrelevant but insidious assertion’^[270] that his clients were absent for five years or more �in flight’ (phyge), i.e. to avoid tax, and when they returned had a parcel of wrong land restored to them^[271] as well as their right land, and it is that wrong land that they decline responsibility for.

The magistrate questions both the advocates, Neilos the cognitor, and Germanos, the head-villager (meizon) of Karanis, who gives evidence through an interpreter on behalf of the villagers; after which, in an altercatio, Alexandros for the respondents makes further cogent points, until Neilos, breaking down under questioning, is caught in an obvious lie. �Alexandros said: “In order that I may the more completely convince Your Honour, there is also a dwelling-house under the same name in the city possessed by our opponents as successors to their father.” The syndikos said to Neilos the cognitor. “You have heard him, on the opponents’ side, say that you also have a house under the same name as the parcels of land, and you must state whether you are in possession of a house or part-house, or not.” Neilos through Anoubion, Chief Assistant acting as interpreter: “I do not know if there is a house.” The syndikos said to him: “Well, who collects the rent?” Through the same interpreter he replied: “Nobody. It burnt down.” The syndikos said to him: “In that case, why did you begin by saying there wasn’t any house under this name, and now you agree that there was but it has burnt down?” Neilos through the same interpreter replied: “I don’t know anything, and they haven’t had rent.” ’ The syndikos wastes no more time, but delivers his judgment, that on the basis of the imperial constitution and the evidence the property belongs to the petitioners and they must pay tax on it. Neilos the cognitor cries ekkaloumai T appeal’, and that is the end of the papyrus.

Scholars have pointed out^[272] how the advocate for the respondents uses the rule about longissimi temporis praescriptio (new at the time) for a purpose opposite to what we - rightly - assume to have been that of the legislator. It was designed as a safeguard: here it is used (and the judge endorses the use) as a weapon, to pin possessors down against their will so that they shall not escape tax liability.^[273] Schmidt admired the cleverness of the advocate, while deploring the argument as a �trick’ that �took in’ the magistrate. That is to misunderstand advocacy and law: the law often develops by the creative �stretching’ of rules, by people �trying it on’. They may not succeed, the law may not develop in that direction; for that �stretching’ can, and must, be tested in the courts. There was, in this case, to be an appeal: it was open to the Prefect to decline to sanction that extension - and there is no sign, in fact, that it did �catch on’.

In any event, the most important aspect of this document for present purposes is the enormous vista that it affords of continuity down the ages. Here we are, four hundred years after Cicero and seven hundred after Demosthenes; and the manipulation of rules and sleight-of-hand with evidence are just like what is relentlessly uncovered by modern commentators in Demosthenes and Cicero. And though we are not, here, in the domain of published orations or the polished performances of the metropolitan courts, even here �in the sticks’ and at a late epoch the feel of oratorical style is still perceptible. Advocacy has

III. Advocacy in the papyri: the under-exploited source 107 not died out: it is alive and kicking - kicking where it hurts, which is what advocates are wanted for,

36.P.Berl.Zill. 4 [ed. Zilliacus], AD 350. We end the chronological sequence with one more â€?bilingual’ text,²⁰² a report of proceedings before the praeses of the Thebaid. The subject is a complaint that a man who is heir to some property is being harassed by the inspectors of taxes. It begins (Col. I)²⁰³ in the midst of what appears to be an advocate’s speech on behalf of the complainant, which involves the narratio of a previous judgment given in his favour: he has nevertheless, the advocate says, â€?gone on being harassed’,²⁰⁴ and now he appeals for someone²⁰⁵ to be made to appear in court. That seems to be followed by some dialogue between the magistrate and the advocate; and then, in the more intelligible Col. II, the magistrate gives a conditional ruling: â€?If he can show that according to his rights he is entitled not to be troubled, the exactor, etc. will see that he is not.’ At that juncture an advocate, one Theodosius,²⁰⁶ takes a crucial and apparently new point of fact, that his client has a brother who is joint heir with him and ought to contribute, and the magistrate gives a second conditional ruling: â€?If he can be shown to be co-heir para tois autois (?“on the same terms”) he shall reimburse what you have paid on your own....’ â€?And’ - interrupts the advocate - â€?not be further troubled, and the exactor, etc. will see that he is not?’ “Yes, he shall not be troubled.’²⁰⁷ There is no sign of the presence of the respondent tax-collectors or anyone representing them; it looks as if all parties were expecting the dispute to rumble on into some higher jurisidiction.

37.P.Oslo 17 [ed. Eitrem, Amundsen], AD 136. The reason for appending this text to the â€?main series’, though out of chronological order, is to provide, for comparison, one reasonably complete text²⁰⁸ of legal proceedings in which there

²⁰² Only the rubrics are in Latin; the remarks of the magistrate are just written in bigger writing.

²⁰³The left-hand side of the lines of Col. I is missing.

²⁰⁴And, apparently, imprisoned in the Treasury building.

²⁰⁵ His adversary? â€?[...Jonomon pareinai toi dikasterioi’ should not be lightly restored as \kler\onomon’, because the argument about a joint heir and defendant is only raised later, as will appear.

²⁰⁶ Theodosius adv(ocatus) d(ixit)... Perhaps he is the same advocate as in Col. I, perhaps a second advocate for the complainant.

²⁰⁷ I think lines 26-7 mean roughly that, though I cannot translate them.

²⁰⁸ Not but what the text is disputable in places: readings have been chosen to make plausible sense. is no sign of advocates.^[274] The case is about the alleged destruction of vines. The document is an extract from the records of the strategos of the Prosopite nome. After the date, it reads as follows:^[275] â€?There having appeared Naaros, called Konthauris, and Peebos, both sons of the woman Taphesies, with the presence of Haronnesis, son of Pandbeus and Imouthes, son of Horos:^[276] the strategos to Haronnesis: “What do you say concerning these?” He having said: “They were at supper along with me and they left the party, it being night, and when they came back they said they had cut down the vines of Imouthes”; and the party of Naaros having said that they were being falsely testified against (sykophanteisthai) by him, the strategos·. “Did you not [...] him on that occasion?”^[277] And they having said: “Yes, but he has never heard from us any such thing (ouden mentoige toiouto akekoe par’hemon)”, the strategos·. “If you had a clear conscience, why, when sought for interrogation on the matter, did you not appear until your names had been posted?” And they having said: “We were working away from home on an estate (ezi ktemati)”, the strategos·. “And the reason why you, abused (epereasate) the (plaintiffs) estate, Haronnesis has stated”. And ordering them to be flogged he said: “Confess the, truth.” But, they persisting that they had not cut down vines, the strategos·. “Where is the Chief of Police?” And, it emerging: that his brother Imouthes^[278] was present, for he was ill, the. strategos to Imouthes: “Let these two persons give you security to appear before the epistrategos when he assumes investigation, of the affair.” ’ So, as we have seen so often, responsibility is.x ducked. It is conceivable that there are no advocates in this case) precisely because it is only a preliminary hearing; yet we have) seen advocates in other cases no less preliminary. It is true that) all the parties to this action are native Egyptians, but that fact,, as was observed earlier, might have made the participation of advocates all the more desirable. The problem â€?why advocates and why not advocates?’ remains unsolved.

The editor observes that �the style is concise and good Greek with a flavour of literary language’: he is, of course, referring to the performance of the strategos, there being no advocates. And when he further says that there is a �natural rhythm - stylistic and logical - in this short piece of official and conventional Greek language’ we must take that just remark as a warning that the canons of rhetoric assuredly survived not only in the mouths of advocates but in the discourse of all the educated class.