26 X: Jakub Urbanik (UW), On the function of the Petition of Dionysia (P. Oxy. II 237)

Abstract

Since its publication more than 120 years ago, P. Oxy 237, usually dubbed as the ‘Petition of Dionysia’ has attracted considerable scholarly attention: not just because the court confrontation of an elite daughter with her own father provides prime fodder for social history, but due to the numerous insights it offers into legal life in 2nd century Egypt. Its nine columns preserve for us rich normative and jurisdictional material, and provide crucial information on the functioning of the property record office, on the law of marriage, on the paternal power and its limits, on the Roman jurisdictional practice, the activity of the local legal experts, and, above all, on one of the main questions confronted by juristic papyrology: the coexistence in Roman Egypt of different legal traditions (‘legal plurality), the interactions between them and the approach thereto of the Roman courts.

In the proposed paper I will present some of the results of the research project aiming at a comprehensive new edition and commentary of P. Oxy. 237. The reading of the fragmentary four columns left unpublished by Grenfell and Hunt and numerous corrections to the rest of the text  by Constantinos Balamoshev have allowed a renewed look into the entirety of the document and new insights into its narrative, content, and nature. I will especially focus on the materiality of the document and its first, hitherto unpublished column. My presentation will attempt to suggest the possible function of the P. Oxy. 237 in the light of the discoveries of our research team (JL Alonso, C. Balamoshev in collaboration  with K. Żochowski).