La lingua delle petizioni nell’Egitto romano

This book investigates the linguistic and formal aspects of more than a thousand requests for justice protection preserved in Egyptian papyri Roman Principate, mainly written Greek. For many centuries Egypt, from Ptolemaic period to late Empire, petitions addressed judicial authorities shared same textual structure made use recurring lexical formulas. Such uniformity was result adherence by scribes legal advisers repertoires that had wide circulation. study evaluates correspondence between formulas legislation, normative conventions, spoken literary language, how these factors interacted with each other over centuries.