THE PROVINCIAL EDICT in EGYPT by RANON KATZOFF

THE PROVINCIAL EDICT IN EGYPT

RANON KATZOFF(New York)*

It is generally held that the governor of each province of the Roman empire issued an edict similar to that of the urban praetor and entitled edictum prouinciale 1). Because there are very few ancient references to this edict its existence was denied at the be- ginning of this century 2), but has been vigorously defended since then. The greatest certainty has been claimed for the existence of the edictum prouinciale in Egypt. Lenel considered the doctrine to be secured by the Egyptian material 3). Wenger says the papyri have placed the existence of the edict beyond all doubt 4). The absence of any citation of the edict in court in the papyri pre- served to us, raises the question of the correctness of the doctrine of the existence of the edictum prouinciale in Egypt. I believe that

*) I wishto expressmy gratitudeto ProfessorA. Arthur Schiller,under whose directionthis study was made; and to ProfessorJoseph Modrzejewski,who read the manuscriptof this article,and offeredseveral valuable suggestions. 1) Paul Kruger, Geschichteder Quellenund Literatur des RömischenRechts, 2nd edition (Munichand Leipzig1912) 95; Otto Lenel,Das EdictumPerpetuum, 3rd edition(Leipzig 1927) (hereafter cited as LenelEP) 4 f.; OscarWilliam Rein- muth, ThePrefect of Egyptfrom Augustusto Diocletian,Klio Beiheft34, Neue Folge Heft 21 (Leipzig1935) 46 ff. ;H. F. Jolowicz,Historical Introduction to the Study of RomanLaw, 2nd edition (Cambridge1952) 368; LeopoldWenger, Die Quellendes rumischenRechts (Vienna 1953) 4 1 1Rafael ; Taubenschlag, The Law of Greco-RomanEgypt in the Light of the Papyri, 332 B.C.-640A.D., 2nd edition (Warsaw1955) (hereafter cited as Taubenschlag,Law) 33f.The fullestdiscussions of the generalproblems associated with the edictumprovinciale are Egon Weiss, Studienzu den rdmischenRechtsquellen (Leipzig 1914) 65-1 31 ;W. W. Buckland, L'EdictumProvinciale, RH 4th Ser. 13 (1934)81-96; and Gerard Chalon,L'idit de TiberiusJulius Alexander: Etude historique et exjgjtique(Olten and Lausanne 1964)72 ff. 2) Von Velsen,SZ 21 (1900)73. 3) Lenel,EP 4 n. 4. 4) Wenger(above, note 1) 411. 416 an examination of the evidence from Egypt tends to support the dissents of Arangio-Ruiz 5) and Modrzejewski 6). The case for the existence of the provincial edict in Egypt rests primarily on the evidence of three bilingual petitions of the third century for bonorum possessio. The first, SB 1010 (= P. Giss, inv. no. 40, ed. O. Eger, SZ 32 (1911) 378 ff. = Meyer, Jur. Pap. 27 = FIRA 3.61) is the petition addressed to the prefect Aurelius Appius Sabinus by M. Aurelius Chaeremon also known as Didymus, in 249, asking for possession of the estate of his deceased mother, Aurelia Hammonilla. The petitioner is a minor and is acting by the auctoritas of his guardian, who is none other than his father, M. Aurelius Chaeremon, also known as Zoilus. The petition itself is written in Latin and takes up the first eight lines of the papyrus. It is followed by the subscript of the petitioner in Greek, in which the object of the petition is again stated briefly (8-10). Then come the Greek date (11), the subscript of the prefect (12), the reference number of the petition by column and roll (12), and finally a Greek translation of the petition itself (13-end). The Greek translation is almost entirely lost, but was restored on the basis of the Latin text and the other papyri of the same type 7). By a remarkable coincidence we now have this translation on another papyrus, republished as SB 9298. What is of interest to us is the operative sentence of the petition where the petitioner asks for bonorum possessio ex ea parte edicti [legi]timis heredibus b(onorum) p(ossessionem)

5) FIRA III,, p. 183. In his L'applicationdu droit romainen Egypteaprjs la constitutionantoninienne, Bulletin de l'Institut d'Egypte 29 (1948)110, he refers to the edict mentionedin the petitionsdiscussed below as that of the praetor, not of the prefect.I havenot found a full expositionof his viewson this issue. 6) Joseph Modrzejewski,in a reviewof Chalon, above, note 1, in RH 4th Series43 (1965)98 f., deliversa brief but sharp attack on the commonlyaccepted view.Modrzejewski kindly showed me the fullerexposition of his view put forth in the course of his article Le rdglede droit dans l'Egypte romainescheduled to appear in Acts of the XIIth InternationalCongress of Papyrology,Ann Arbor, Michigan,1968 (New Haven and Toronto 1969).I am pleasedto note that the con- clusionsof his researchon this topic are generallythe sameas mine. In the FIRA text the openingsquare bracket is missingbefore at the beginningof line 18.