Forms of Domestic Violence in Legal Petitions

From a terminological perspective, violence has been subject to varying definitions and scholarly debates. Based on the agents, victims, and impacts of violence in mass media, Berger has identified nearly seventy types of violence, reflecting the complexity of the concept of violence and the diversity of its aspects.¹⁹ Indeed, the definition of “violence” varies widely depending on individual scholarly usage. For Abelson, “violence connotes illegitimate or excessive force.”²⁰ Similarly, Graham and Gurr define violence as “behavior designed to inflict physical injury to people or damage to property.”²¹ These narrow explanations agree that violence only conveys physical harm to individuals and their properties. However, I adopt Lawrence’s definition of violence to mean “the entire class of actions which result, or are intended to result, in serious injury to life or its material conditions. Serious injury must include the ideas of biological damage, severe physical restraints or property destruction and psychological impairment.”²²

In that sense, violence covers a variety of corporeal and incorporeal behavior intended to threaten human safety, damage property, or debase self-esteem. Yet there are potential differences between ancient and modern perceptions of violence. In legal petitions, the victims of household violence expressed that they were legally wronged by acts that violated the norms of their society. Not only do modern observers agree that these acts are problematic, but the ancient petitioners thought so too. However, households of Greco-Roman Egypt also witnessed other acts that we would today regard as “violent,” but that would not have been considered problematic in antiquity. There are certain kinds of physically, verbally, and emotionally harmful acts that would not have risen to the level of illegality or social stigmatization in Greco-Roman Egypt. In 1 BCE, Hilarion writes from Alexandria to his wife Alis, telling her that if “you bear a child and it is male, let it be; if it is female, cast it out.”²³ Similarly, ancient teachers used to physically punish students and apprentices for misbehavior and failure to learn.²⁴ The exposure of unwanted infants and the beating of schoolchildren and apprentices strike us as heartless, abhorrent, and highly violent. However, such acts were viewed as acceptable and tolerated within ancient social norms in Greco-Roman Egypt.²⁵

Despite osteological evidence of child abuse on a two- to three-year-old child’s skeleton uncovered from Kellis 2, a Romano-Christian cemetery in the Dakhla Oasis,²⁶ legal petitions from Oxyrhynchus and Tebtynis remain our main source of information about the forms and locations of domestic violence. Violence was a complex social phenomenon in Greco-Roman Egypt, and the inhabitants used a variety of Greek terms to denote different types of household violence. The preference of one appellation over another depended not only on the formalities of the language of legal appeal and scribal tradition, but also on the form of violence inflicted on petitioners.

Greek papyri employ three different terms: bia, loidoria, and hybris. In 150–54 CE, Stotoetis of Soknopaiou Nesos petitioned Demetrios alias Harpokratios, the strategos of the divisions of Themistes and Polemon, concerning a specific act of bia: namely, he had been forced by Sotas Theonos and his son Amonios to sign away his rights to a sum of money. Bia here refers to the use of violence against property. The culprits forced him to do this “with hybris and plēgē [blows].”²⁷ Although bia and hybris here coexist in a single document, they refer to different violent actions. In a fourth century CE petition, a gamekeeper claims that a hunter repulsed him “with hybris and loidoria” when he attempted to claim a judgment against him, similarly suggesting two different offenses.²⁸ Three forms of violence can be identified in Greco-Roman Egypt. Bia is physical violence against individuals and properties, loidoria is verbal abuse, and hybris is emotional abuse designed to humiliate or dishonor the victim. These are discussed in the following sections.

Bia (Physical/Bodily Violence)

Bia literally means an act of violence using bodily strength or force.²⁹ It designates acts of bodily violence committed by or against the house occupants with intentions to harm somebody.³⁰ Bia also included violent acts directed against the house and household (parents, children, and enslaved persons).³¹ Acts of physical/bodily violence included, but are not limited to, blows (plēgē),³² beating (pugmē), and trampling on the victim’s body (laktisma).³³ Petitioners use a broad range of verbs to report incidents of physical violence. The verb employed at the heading of legal complaints is adikoumai, meaning ‘I am wronged’.³⁴ Various verbs expressed bodily assaults, notably katakoptō (knock down), prosballō (offend), epipherō (assault), and eperchomai (to attack).³⁵

In Greek papyri, bia denotes violent behavior against individuals and their properties. Injurious bodily treatment of enslaved laborers, who were counted as property, was thus also called bia. In the fourth century CE, a woman complains of an attack against her household; she complains that the accused’s enslaved persons and her enslaved girl were subject to bodily attack (bia) and insolence (hybris), denoting different violent actions.³⁶ The adjectival or adverbial form of bia (biaios, biaiōs) appears in one papyrus petition to designate the individual who commits corporeal violence or harm to property (bia).³⁷Biaioi are also the persons who died in an untimely manner and whose spirits dwelled somewhere in the neighborhood of their graves until the predetermined time of their death.³⁸ In magical papyri, the word biaioi designates those who died violently and whose spirits were consigned to this world and thus were accessible spiritual agents for love charms.³⁹

In Greco-Roman Egypt, neither the inhabitants nor the social order tolerated household violence using bodily strength or weapons. In many cases, the victims addressed their petitions to the Ptolemaic king, demanding the arrest of the aggressor. The Ptolemaic king forwarded the case to the strategos, asking the seizure of the perpetrator by the epistates or archiphylaketes. In 221 BCE, Hediste complained to Ptolemy IV that she and her husband Philonous were “attacked and beaten in their house and received life-threatening injuries.”⁴⁰ In the same year, Eutychos, a water-carrier in Aliatos of the Arsinoite, petitioned Ptolemy IV to denounce the son of Apollonios who had “struck my wife and laid his hands on me” in what appears to be a domestic context.⁴¹ In 215 BCE in Lagis of the Arsinoite, a petitioner complained to Ptolemy IV that Horos, the devotee of the god Harpaesis, “broke into the house and gave me many strikes and blows on different parts of my body.”⁴²

Bodily assaults are the most common and dangerous type of complaint in documents concerning violence, since they endangered the victim’s life. Though references to being “half-killed” (apokteinas) or “half-dead” (hemithanēs) occur in a few late Roman petitions,⁴³ none of the petitions I surveyed from Oxyrhynchus and Tebtynis concerning domestic violence ended in the death of the petitioner, though in the course of a domestic robbery three individuals (a guard, his brother, and a nurse) were killed at Theadelphia in 167–68 CE,⁴⁴ and a pregnant woman claimed that she gave birth to a dead child when she was beaten at Areos Kome.⁴⁵ Physical injury of the victim is frequently attested, however. In 305 CE, Hierax appeals to the logistēs of Oxyrhynchus to send a public doctor to investigate his wife, who was involved in an altercation whose location is not specified. The wife was subject to bodily harm that necessitated medical examination and, probably, treatment.⁴⁶ Similarly, Aurelia Senpatus complained that thieves invaded their house, robbed it, and attacked her husband Titoes and son Pseces with swords. Pseces was wounded in the head and Titoes in the arm. She asks that a public doctor be sent to the house to investigate their condition so that “they can receive the necessary treatment.”⁴⁷

Most petitions concerning corporeal violence are similar in form and language, though the cause and narrative of the assault and the agents differ from one document to another. These petitions normally give the cause of hostility and the full narrative of violence. In 296 CE, Aurelia Taesis of Karanis petitioned Aurelius Gordianus, beneficiarius, stating that she suffered bia and unlawful assaults from her father’s brother Chairemon, whose wife and daughters “attacked me with blows, dragged[?] me around by the hair, tore my clothing to pieces, and left me prostrate on the ground in the presence of Ol and Casius, officials of the same village, who rescued me from the women.”⁴⁸ Here, the narrative of the assault did not only include the beating itself, but also the tearing of clothes and the presence of eyewitnesses.

Petitioners claimed monetary compensation on grounds of physical violence. In 218 BCE, Hermogenes, son of Phil[---], a “Persian of the epigonē” who lived in Lagis, complained to Ptolemy III against Petosiris, who “placed his hands upon me … with beatings and stompings upon whatever part of my body he might strike.”⁴⁹ Hermogenes requested that if the things he writes prove to be true, “Petosiris may be forced to pay 200 drachmas for the blows.”⁵⁰ In the fourth century CE, Aurelius Sarapion from Philadelphia was subject to physical assault, verbal abuse, and property destruction by Arios, the son of Agammon. In his petition, Aurelius Sarapion asked that Arios and his father be brought to justice and pay the proper amount “on account of his safety [sōterias].”⁵¹ The plaintiff asked for financial compensation for physical assaults (bia), beatings (plēgai), and property damage. He also requested that the attackers be brought to court. Perhaps the arrest of the assailants and their appearance in a courtroom was itself partial recompense for the victim of corporeal violence. Yet the victim also claimed financial reimbursement for bodily and property damage. Inhabitants of Greco-Roman Egypt considered money a compensation for physical violence inflicted on them or their property.

Domestic physical violence could also be committed through agents. In 145–47 CE, Ptolemaios son of Diodoros, a tenant on the imperial estates in the Arsinoite, petitioned Lucius Proculus, prefect of Egypt, that Isidoros, a sailor-diver “made an attack on me [epēlthen] through one of his suborned agents, a certain Ammonios, also called Kaboi, a culpable fellow who had been proscribed on account of his lawless life … he refused to let me enjoy my lease and even excluded me from my house and insulted me (hybris) until he extorted money from me.”⁵² The otherwise unattested Greek term for sailor-divers, that is, nautokolymbētai, is odd. According to the papyrus, these are “public officers and in the service of the water administration and in attendance on the shore-guards and cultivation inspectors.”⁵³ Ptolemaios was subject to violence in his house, where he was not only beaten and insulted, but was forced to leave his house and pay money. Isidoros used a thug to do illegal acts on his behalf in the hope of escaping unpunished. Ammonios was perhaps bribed to commit all these unlawful acts against Ptolemaios.

Loidoria (Verbal/Oral Violence)

In Greek petitions, loidoria (and its cognates) is the most common term used to describe oral abuse committed by or against the household.⁵⁴ Roman law understood language as an integral part of iniuria.⁵⁵ Loidoria appears with bia and hybris, suggesting that the inhabitants understood these words as describing different violent actions. Loidoria appears in connection with bia in a petition of the early Roman Period.⁵⁶ It also appears in a personal letter from the third or fourth century CE, in which the writer complains to an associate about the behavior of a particular enslaved person, who treated him “with hybris as well.”⁵⁷ Petitioners used the verb loidoreō when they complained about shameful abuse (aischita) uttered against them. In 222 BCE at Ghoran, Pappos complained to Ptolemy III of his son Strouthos that “whenever he meets me, he reviles me [loidorei] most shamefully, and abusing me physically [apobiazom(enos)] … into my house.”⁵⁸

While the difference between bia (physical assault) and loidoria (verbal abuse) is understood, the difference between loidoria and hybris when they refer to verbal abuse is not fully clear. It seems that loidoria is used to refer to oral abuse, which intends to inflict some sort of emotional burden, while hybris stresses the shame that it seeks to create. This is why both loidoria and hybris sometimes appear in the same document. Given the silence of the papyri on this point, we cannot distinguish many of the specific nuances of loidoria and hybris when they come respectively to designate oral abuse or shameful verbal assault. Unfortunately, petitioners did not record the specific verbal offenses uttered against them in petitions. The emotional impact of oral insult and verbal offense on victims would have differed from one person to another.

Hybris (Emotional Violence)

The concept of “domestic violence” should not be restricted to cases of bodily injury (bia) or verbal offense (loidoria). In fact, there are many acts of violent behavior committed with intentions to distress the soul, offend the dignity, and damage the victim’s honor/reputation. In petitions, these acts of hybris are equally important as forms of human injury. Hybris designates shameful acts of insult that place an emotional burden on petitioners.⁵⁹ Fisher defines hybris as “the deliberate infliction of shame and dishonor,”⁶⁰ and petitions illustrate that hybris denotes bodily or verbal as well as emotional assault with intentions to dishonor somebody.

Hybris covers a variety of offensive conducts against a person’s body, honor, or reputation. In petitions, the verb hybrizō designates acts of shame. The act of dishonoring someone’s social standing was called hybris in the local law. In Roman law, the Latin term iniuria seems to cover a much broader range of insults than hybris. Iniuria can describe essentially any injustice or insult,⁶¹ while hybris has a much more specific implication since it included physical acts and verbal offenses that showed personal contempt for another person. Hybris conveys all forms of insolence or attempts to inflict humiliation. In his studies on hybris, Fisher demonstrated that the essence of hybris is behavior intended to dishonor people, that is, it refers to moral transgression designed to humiliate and dishonor the victim.⁶²

In Greco-Roman Egypt, insolence or attempts to humiliate somebody involved a variety of behavior that carried cultural and symbolic significance. In 218 BCE, the pouring of urine on Herakleides, from Alexandrou Nesos in Krokodilopolis, is called an act of hybris. Herakleides complained to Ptolemy III:

A certain Egyptian woman, whose name is said to be Psenobastis, leaned over and poured urine down upon my clothing, with the result that they were dripping [with urine]. I was vexed and upbraided her, and she abused me. Psenobastis, with her right hand, yanked the part of my cloak that lay upon my shoulder—the himation I was wearing—and ripped and struck it with the result that my chest was laid bare in the presence of some bystanders whom I called to witness. The things of which I accuse her she did out of hybris and she herself put her hands on me first… . She was upbraided by some of those present for the things which she had done to me, and as a result, she left me behind there and went inside [her house], from where she had poured the urine on me. I need you, king, if it seems best to you, to not overlook me, having been treated with hybris so outrageously by an Egyptian woman—I, being a Greek and a foreigner.⁶³

Herakleides was subject to a mixture of hybris acts by Psenobastis. He was physically beaten, verbally abused, and emotionally insulted. Hybris can thus overlap with both bia and loidoria. In CE 20–50 at Oxyrhynchus, Syras, daughter of Theonos, similarly complained to Herakleides, priest and chief judge, against her husband Sarapion, who treated her with hybris and laid his hands on her in their dwelling place.⁶⁴ In the ordering of the petition, the pouring of urine comes before other physical and verbal engagement, though in reality it occurred at the end of the fight between Herakleides and Psenobastis. In this case, the maintenance of self-esteem is given preference over other physical and verbal well-being. Here, the emotional violence was more insulting to Herakleides than the physical and oral harm hurled at him. Pouring urine was probably meant to cause injury to Herakleides’s honor and reputation in the community, a consideration that surely weighed on him.

One may wonder why Psenobastis chose urine in particular. I would like to suggest that the use of urine was not a coincidence, and that she intentionally used urine for the symbolic connotation it carried in an Egyptian context.⁶⁵ Although urine was used for different purposes in the ancient world, it was often regarded as a waste discharge and disgusting substance. In Rome, urine was used by the first century CE in hair dyeing and as a teeth therapy.⁶⁶ Roman fullers similarly used urine to bleach and stiffen clothing.⁶⁷ Galen expressed his abhorrence of using human effluvia such as urine, excrement, sweat, or menstrual blood as remedies.⁶⁸ In Greco-Roman Egypt, urine continued to be used in pregnancy tests and for determining fetal sex.⁶⁹ In the first century CE, Apollonios Mys, a doctor who worked in Alexandria, listed camel urine as a remedy for dandruff and hot donkey urine for a sore throat.⁷⁰ In Egyptian funerary literature, however, urine is a disgusting substance, which is drunk only by the impure dead.⁷¹

Although pouring urine on somebody is not a dangerous act of somatic violence, it was an effective way to compound an insult to dignity and honor in ancient Egypt. The earliest reference to urine is Pyramid Texts 210, where urine is an abomination of the deceased.⁷² In chapter 53 of the Book of the Dead, which is titled “spell for not eating excretion nor drinking urine in the god’s domain,” urine appears as an abomination and punishment for the sinful deceased during the passage into the afterlife.⁷³ At this time, the deceased underwent a stage of purification, in which many texts show that he/she sought to protect himself/herself from eating excretion and drinking urine.⁷⁴ In an Egyptian context, drinking, and by extension touching, urine was a punishment that transformed a pure into an impure individual. Being impure further meant that the individual would not enjoy an afterlife. Pouring urine on Herakleides could be understood as a way of contaminating him. The association between urine, humiliation, and loss of dignity also explains why the well-known execration texts, which were magical tools for the destruction of the enemies of the Egyptian state, Pharaoh, and personal enemies, were often saturated with urine.⁷⁵ Wax figurines of Seth and Apophis, the archenemies of Osiris and the archetypes of chaos, were also pounded, trampled, spit on, stabbed, burnt, and boiled in urine.⁷⁶

In a domestic context, pouring urine on Herakleides was thus meant to defile him and scorn his dignity in public. Bryen argued that “the ordering and highlighting of facts in a legal complaint is a cultural product as it draws on a specific vocabulary of insult, presenting images that have a symbolic resonance in a given community.”⁷⁷ Bryen’s ideas about petition ordering are very useful here. My interpretation of urine symbolism may explain why, in the ordering of his petition, Herakleides gave priority to urine-pouring before other physical and verbal offenses. This example suggests a synthesis of Greek and Egyptian conceptions of personal insult: in presenting Psenobastis’s urine-pouring as an act of hybris, Herakleides shows that he recognizes the Egyptian cultural context of urine-pouring, and he translates those Egyptian ideas into the Greek concept of hybris. If an attacker wanted to damage a victim’s reputation in the local community and inflict an act of hybris, the front of the house would be a good place to do this because it was so visible.⁷⁸ The stripping of honor and damage to individual dignity, the visibility of injury and insult, and exposure to public view are central concerns in petitions.⁷⁹

The stripping of someone’s clothing also falls under the category of hybris, entailing the utmost insult to human dignity and reputation. In 103 BCE, Theotimos from Theadelphia petitioned Cleopatra III and Ptolemy X against Diokleos son of Alexander, a “Persian of the epigonē.” Theotimos “was beaten in his house and then was taken away by force in the street, in which he was oppressed … shamefully abused, beaten, and stripped of his himation and clothing.”⁸⁰ Here, Theotimos was the victim of household violence, in that he was first beaten somewhere inside his house. Then, he was taken or perhaps dragged into the street, where he was beaten again and stripped of his clothing in front of passers-by. In the fourth century CE, a Christian woman similarly complained against her husband for committing violence against the accused’s enslaved laborers, agent, and son and her own enslaved laborers and foster daughters for seven days in the cellars of his house. She accused him of committing different acts of hybris, including stripping her foster daughters completely naked, “which is contrary to the laws.”⁸¹ In Greco-Roman Egypt, it was illegal to strip off somebody’s clothing since it was a visible example of debasing dignity and honor.

Petitioners also used hybris when they complained about shameful reproach (aischita)⁸² or vulgar abuse (aselgēmata)⁸³ uttered against them. In the fourth century CE, a petitioner claims that an enslaved woman “had come to his house … and used uncommon hybris against my wife and unmarried daughter by means of foul and inappropriate language.”⁸⁴ The Christian woman mentioned above similarly complains against her husband, who, among other acts of hybris, “said cruel things to her face and through his nose.”⁸⁵ Although the Christian plaintiff gives a detailed description of every other act of violence committed by her husband, she does not mention the content of the cruel statements directed against her. To my knowledge, there are no specific examples of the content of verbal assaults delivered in domestic contexts. This absence may be explained by the desire of the victim to show his/her prudishness, which might win the favor of the responsible official. Perhaps the content was also too rude to be repeated in an official document. In 115 BCE, one individual, Artemidoros, was described as “the hated of heaven” in a private letter.⁸⁶ This is probably an example of oral abuse in a nondomestic context.

Verbal abuse frequently co-occurs with physical assaults. In the third century CE, Aurelius A[---] alias Aphynchis, former exhibitor of games in Oxyrhynchus, petitioned to Aurelius Alexander, of the police magistrates:

Yesterday evening a certain Didyme, the wife of Agathos Daimon, the cook, passing my house and finding me standing there with our family, treated us with insolence [exhybrizen], using speakable and unspeakable expressions… . Thereupon, when I stopped her, advising her to keep off from us, she leapt upon me, and, being distracted in her senses, even stretched out her hands and smote me, and railed furiously at some of my daughter’s sons, whom I called to witness, and not only at them, but even at a public official who was present.⁸⁷

Didyme, “a woman abundantly furnished with the utmost shamelessness and effrontery” as the papyrus describes her, came to Aurelius’s house and committed a large number of aggressive behaviors. Not only did she breach the privacy of the household, but she also bombarded the paterfamilias, his household, and a public official with physical and verbal assaults, both of which actions constitute hybris. Rather than a spontaneous confrontation, one suspects that this was a planned assault that had some background, which cannot be reconstructed out of the document.

Additionally, “snorting” and “speaking through the nose” appear in petitions as contemptuous acts of hybris.⁸⁸ In 381 CE, Aurelia Eirene complained about a dispute over an empty building lot, in the course of which one of her fellow villagers was “speaking to my face through his nose [legōn eis prosōpon mou dia tēs eautos rhinos], wishing to end my life, and if I had not obtained help from Pamoun my fellow villager, he would long since have reached (the end) of my life.”⁸⁹

Since Eirene emphasized that she was in danger of losing her life, she might have been subject to or at least threatened by physical violence. Maybe Pamoun held the accused villager back before he could harm her. Yet Eirene stressed the arrogant verbal insult, even though it was certainly coupled with bodily assault. The aforementioned Christian woman similarly charges her husband that he “spoke offensively to me at my face and through his nose.”⁹⁰ Similarly, a tax collector claims that a villager in Karanis “snorted his contempt for me [perierronchasen moi] and wanted to attack me.”⁹¹ In all these cases, oral insult is paired with physical assault.

All sorts of pressure also fall into the category of hybris. Our Christian female petitioner also complains that her husband:

persisted in distressing my soul [thlibōn tēn psychēn mou] about his enslaved Anilla, both at Antinoopolis and here, saying, “Get rid of this enslaved girl because she knows equally well how to get what she wants,” wishing to confuse me, and on this pretext to take away whatever I possess. However, I refused to get rid of her, and he continued to say, “In the course of a month I will take a mistress for myself.” God knows these things.⁹²

Here, the husband upset the emotions of his wife by asking her to discard his enslaved female and threatening that he would take a concubine for himself. Although it is unknown whether the husband fulfilled his threat and took a mistress, his threat was sufficient to alter his wife’s emotions, annoy her, put her under stress, and displease her soul.

Exclusion from the house was also an act of hybris. The verb exelaunō, “knock out” or “expel from,” is used in reference to acts of exclusion from houses.⁹³ The above-mentioned Ptolemaios son of Diodoros petitioned the prefect that Isidoros

refused to let me enjoy my lease and even excluded me from my house and insulted me until he extorted money from me… . I can bring proofs on the spot concerning my being insulted [hybris] and subjected to extortion [diaseisma], so that I may be able to live unmolested in my home during the happiest times of our exalted emperor, and your delightful prefecture, and may obtain relief.⁹⁴

These acts of shameful abuse and suppression threatened the safety and property of Ptolemaios, whose goal, the papyrus tells, is to be able to live in peace at home.

Hybris also included forcible entry into houses for the purpose of extortion. The verb eisbiazomai, “force one’s way into,” is used to complain about intrusion into houses. It refers to the violation of private possessions, either in a private house⁹⁵ or on royal land.⁹⁶ In the mid-second century BCE, Petesouchos son of Petos, a royal farmer from Oxyrhyncha, petitioned Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II against Stratonike daughter of Ptolemaios of Krokodilopolis. He claimed that Stratonike, “mischievously wishing to practice extortion [diasisein] on me, coming with other persons against my house, forces her way in before any judgement has been given.”⁹⁷ In the third century CE, one person similarly complains to an official, perhaps the strategos, that his son-in-law Polydeukes committed hybris by “rushing into his house.”⁹⁸ Although these complaints do not report any physical harm befalling the occupants or their property, house encroachment was viewed as an act of hybris because of its violation of household privacy.

Other forms of hybris could entail bodily harm, as in the case of wife beating, which was also regarded as an act of hybris. In a fragmentary petition of the first/second century CE, a woman complained: “My husband Julius, son of Diogenes, together with a girl with two children by him, having unlawfully cast me out of the house with my children and carried off everything in the house, not only … but beating me unlawfully.”⁹⁹

While some Greek authors condemned wife beating as a shameful spousal behavior, some Latin authors portrayed it as good family discipline.¹⁰⁰ According to John Chrysostom, it was the height of insult (hybris) for a man to beat his wife, because it treated her like an enslaved person.¹⁰¹ The Roman practice of patria potestas, which gave a husband power to chastise members of his household, was not applied in Egypt, where, as Evans noticed, women were historically “equal partners with their husbands in marriage.” To be sure, it was illegal for a man to beat a freeborn wife in Egypt by the time of Justinian.¹⁰²

Some petitions place particular emphasis on legal and social status. Petitioners emphasize their legal status and social rank when they were subject to acts of hybris. In 222 BCE at Magdola, Crateuas, a “Macedonian” steward of klēroi, was beaten (plēgas) and insulted (hybris) by some shepherds, because he was accusing them of pasturing their flock unauthorized on a plot of land which was under his supervision.¹⁰³ The already-mentioned “Greek” Herakleides complained that he was outrageously treated with hybris “by an Egyptian woman.”¹⁰⁴ In a petition of 163 CE, Gaius Iulius Niger, a Roman veteran, complains that he suffered insolence (hybris) “at the hands of an Egyptian fellow,” Isidoros, son of Achillas, scribe of the superintendents of sequestered property of Karanis.¹⁰⁵ The emphasis on ethno-cultural identity (Greek, Macedonian, Roman, and Egyptian) was probably a tactic to ensure that official authorities would take up petitions seriously. Although the treatment of petitioners differed on the basis of their legal/social status, they all could approach local, royal, and imperial officials for redress. For at least some petitioners, legal or ethnic status was a pressing concern in petitions about domestic violence. Yet most petitioners did not try to play up their legal or ethnic status.

Apart from domestic contexts, examples of physical (bia) and oral (loidoria) assault are also confirmed in temples, baths, or barges. In 200 BCE, Poregebthis, priest and warden of the temple of Isis at Berenikis Thesmophorou, petitioned the archiphylaketes that “Perutis, son of Perutis, whipped [me?] … and took … and when I cried out for help, Papontos, my … but they removed by force from the … [and] planted many blows [plēgai] on me, and wounded my shin, and beat me in my face and took off in possession of my honey and a linen garment worth 2000 drachmas, and a bag containing 328 bronze drachmas, and a bronze altar and a drinking vessel.”¹⁰⁶ In the second century BCE, Asklepiades, sitologos for cavalry dues in the division of Polemon, similarly petitioned Petosiris, komogrammateus of Oxyrhyncha, that when he was bathing in the bath, Pasis son of Aretion and other attendants at the bath “with no regard for decency having beaten me [diarapisantes] and kicked me [laktisantes] in the stomach.”¹⁰⁷

In 164 BCE, the temple of Ammon at Moeris witnessed violent attacks by the Egyptian rebels, who had “not only thrown down parts of the temple but split the stone-work of the shrine and carried off the door-fixtures and other doors to the number of more than 110 and also torn down some of the boarding.”¹⁰⁸ In 135 BCE, Paalas son of Harmais, ship’s guard of the barge of Apollonios, complained to Demetrios, one of the diadochoi, hipparchēs over men, and epistatēs, that certain persons “leapt on board with unseemly shouts [phōnas aprepeis] and gave me many blows [plēgai].”¹⁰⁹ In 114 BCE, Haryotes son of Phaesis, royal farmer of Kerkeosiris, also petitioned Menches, komogrammateus, that “while I was in the great temple of Isis here for devotional purposes on account of the sickness from which I am suffering … Horos son of Haryotes, a resident in the aforesaid temple of Isis, picked a quarrel with me, and beginning with abuse [eloidorēsen] and unseemly behavior [aschēmonei] he at last fell upon me and gave me many blows [plēgai] with the staff which he was carrying.”¹¹⁰ Robbery was a motivation behind bodily and verbal attacks in religious and public buildings. Emotional violence (hybris) is also attested in a vineyard at Talei, when Petsiris, son of Phoulemis, petitioned the strategos against Patynion, son of Herakleides, and his son, who “heaped unseemly insults upon me and in addition beat me unmercifully on any part of my body that they could, and struck me on the side with their fists, so that now I am confined to bed and am in danger of my life.”¹¹¹

Locating Domestic Violence

Having considered forms of household violence, let us now examine their location in relation to the house. In legal petitions, there is a strong association between bia, loidoria, and hybris and two basic architectural/spatial elements of the house: the house front and the house interior. Yet we cannot identify bia with any different location than loidoria or hybris. Almost all acts of bodily, oral, and emotional violence are committed at the house façade and within the house. As liminal zones between the private sphere (the house) and the public sphere (the street), the front door and the domestic pylon were physical settings of violent behavior committed by or against the household.¹¹²

Women appear in petitions as the doers of violence at the house façade.¹¹³ In 218 BCE, the house façade of Psenobastis witnessed acts of hybris against Herakleides, where Psenobastis abused him and tore a part of his cloak in the presence of bystanders before she went inside her house, from which she poured urine on him.¹¹⁴ In 183 BCE at Tebtynis, bloody violence occurred at the street door of the house of Dorion (pros tēi thyrai), a desert guard, in the street opposite the Boubastis-shrine of Patsontis. Hesiodos son of Didymos, Thracian, hundred-arouras-holder of the fifth hipparchy, came on a quarrel in which “Dorion … the nose of the aforesaid Hesiodos [slitting?] the nostril and cut [?] his lip; and Hesiodos cut the right ear of Dorion clean off.”¹¹⁵ As Davoli and Alston argue in this volume, the boundaries between the “public” and “private” spheres were not clearly marked or experienced in an Egyptian context.¹¹⁶ The house frontage can be viewed as a private, semipublic, and public space, where violent acts committed in the front of the house were highly visible, particularly in the presence of the house inhabitants, neighbors, passers-by, and other eyewitnesses.¹¹⁷

Women similarly appear as the victims of violence at the house façade.¹¹⁸ It was common for women to stand at the front door of the house to chat with neighbors or watch what was happening on the street. Yet they were sometimes subject to harassment or violent behavior by drunken pedestrians, especially cleruchs. In 110–12 CE, Heraklas Pauseirion from Oxyrhynchus petitions Archias, the strategos, that Apollos Herakleides, being drunken, “attacked his wife Taamois, while she was standing at the front door of the house [pro tēs thyras].”¹¹⁹

In Greek papyri and Classical literature on Egypt, thyra is the normal word for doorway, including the front door of the house.¹²⁰ However, there were different ways of referring to the street door of the house. One is the parodios thyra, that is, the traversing door.¹²¹ The parodios thyra is mentioned in two petitions from Tebtynis, in which Demas son of Sentheus and other royal farmers at Kerkeosiris complain about a gang of intruders who “crushed the street door of their houses” and stole many valuable items listed in the petitions.¹²² Another word for the front door is exōtera thyra, that is, the exterior door,¹²³ as we see in a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus that testifies to the lease of a workshop with its front door.¹²⁴ The third phrase designated the front door is auleia thyra.¹²⁵ Whether followed by thyra or not, the auleios or auleia can refer to the main entrance.¹²⁶

Men equally appear as the aggressors and victims of violence at the façade of the house. The aforementioned Aurelius Sarapion petitioned:

When I was going to a wedding at my sister’s house, I do not know why Arios the son of Agammon from the same town of Philadelphia was lying in wait for me when I was going out from my house to the town of Kerkeosiris, and he tried to attack me with swords, having with him a group of people whom I can name—the archephodoi of the village can also testify to this, as can the inhabitants of the house. He attacked me, speaking many obscenities at my face. Furthermore, last year this same Arios and his father Agammon attacked my house maliciously, setting it on fire and burning it to the ground… . I hand in my petition and ask that the aforementioned Arion and his father be brought before you and that you secure them, and that they be required to pay the proper amount on account of my safety.¹²⁷

This was a planned conflict, since Arios and his company were waiting for Aurelius until he left his house. Victims of violent behavior frequently emphasize the location of violence when it was committed in front of the house. In this case, the assaults were committed in the presence of the household and the archephodoi. The visibility of bodily and oral assaults committed in front of the house and the presence of eyewitnesses were considered important to stress in legal petitions.

As it shaped the house façade, the domestic pylon was similarly a fitting space for violent behavior. In 221 BCE, Antigenes, a “Persian of the epigonē” and cleruch in Berenikis Thesmophorou, complained to Ptolemy III that Pythiades, cleruch, “hit me before the pylon of the house in the village and verbally abused me most shamefully.”¹²⁸ In 131 CE, Akous son of Herakleos from Tebtynis similarly petitioned Andromachos, strategos of the division of Polemon, concerning a gang of intruders who “made a bold attack upon my house in the village … in the pylon.”¹²⁹ The house façade was a locus of religious and social practices and a marker of social status in Greco-Roman Egypt.¹³⁰ The front door is neither inside nor outside the house. Rather, it is a liminal zone between the house and the street. Domestic properties also included physical forms located before the front door like the prothyron, propylon, and eisodos kai exodos (entry and exit).¹³¹ For these reasons, violent acts were committed by or against the house occupants at structures that shaped the house façade, whether the front door or the pylon.

By contrast, when violence is committed inside a house, papyrus petitioners often do not identify the specific interior part of the house.¹³² In 222 BCE at Ghoran, Pappos complained that he was continuously subject to oral and physical violence in his house by his son Strouthos, suggesting that the assault was conducted in different interior parts of the house.¹³³ In 103 BCE at Theadelphia, Theotimos was similarly beaten somewhere in his village house.¹³⁴ In the third century CE, a petitioner similarly complained that his son-in-law Polydeukes committed an outrage (hybris) on him by rushing into his house.¹³⁵ In complaints of robbery, petitioners placed emphasis on giving a list of the stolen items for redress without identifying the domestic interior structure being violated. Thus in 176 CE, Soterichos of Tebtynis complained that some persons made a thieving incursion into his village house.¹³⁶ In 190 CE, Nechthenebis similarly complained to the strategos concerning a group of thieves who entered into his house at Oxyrhynchus for robbery.¹³⁷

When violence occurred within the house, there were fewer eyewitnesses. It is possible, but uncertain, that the resulting invisibility of this violence is one reason for not specifying the interior element of the house (e.g., aithrion, aulē) in which violence was committed. The only case I know where a papyrus identifies the specific location of violence within a house is P.Oxy. 6.903, in which a Christian woman complains against her husband for committing different acts of hybris against her and members of his and her household for seven days “in the cellars of the house.”¹³⁸ From the frequency of petitions concerning violence committed within houses, it can be inferred that petitioners were more concerned with reporting violence committed against them within the house rather than with identifying their specific locations, unless violent acts lasted for several days and were life threatening, as in the case of the Christian woman.¹³⁹

The house was a dynamic space in Greco-Roman Egypt, and social interaction between the house occupants and their partners or other inhabitants took many different forms. One such form was violence, a term that I understand to reflect a wide variety of injuries from which individuals might suffer. The practice of offensive acts by or against the house occupants was an unacceptable and illegal behavior that necessitated the submission of legal petitions to official authorities, demanding that they take prompt and serious measures. In legal petitions, the requested actions of the officials included the punishment of the perpetrator; the return of stolen property; and less frequently, claims to financial reimbursement.

Violence appears in legal petitions from Greco-Roman Egypt as a complex and pervasive social concept. Violent behavior might include three different, yet sometimes coincident acts: physical (bia), verbal (loidoria), and emotional (hybris) assault. Family members, coresidents, business visitors, state officials, and pedestrians are all involved in household violence. Almost all forms of corporeal and incorporeal violence are attested at the house façade, either at the front door or the domestic pylon, and in the house interior. There is a strong association between particular forms of violence (bia, loidoria, hybris) and two basic architectural/spatial elements of the house: the house front and the house interior. Victims of violence at the house façade stress this location because it implies a high visibility of violence and exposure to eyewitnesses. By contrast, petitioners complaining about violence committed within the house only focus on the narrative of the assault itself. Although the house occupants stressed their desire to relax and enjoy a peaceful life at home, as the examples of Cornelius and Ptolemaios quoted above show, the house was not always a safe place in Greco-Roman Egypt.

Notes

1Parlebas 1977. For a discussion of the various, yet often blurry, definitions of the term “household,” see Barrett, Introduction, this volume. The household did not necessarily rely on the nuclear family or kinship (Brooks Hedstrom, chapter 11, this volume; Gates-Foster, Redon, and Godsey, chapter 12, this volume).

2See P.Mich. 3.174, in which the petitioner’s goal was “to be able to live unmolested in his home.”

3Drawing on a variety of ritual practices, Frankfurter (chapter 10, this volume) stresses that the house protected and materialized the safety and fortune of the family in Late Antique Egypt.

4P.Oxy. 3.531.

5Alston 2001.

6Boozer 2005.

7Huebner 2013.

8Abdelwahed 2016.

9Matić 2021.

10Hue-Arcé 2020.

11Baldwin 1963; Alston 1994; Bryen 2013.

12Bagnall 1989.

13P.Tebt. 1.39.

14Bagnall 2021.

15Parca 2002.

16Evans 1992.

17Byren 2013.

18Throughout the chapter, I use the texts and translations of papyri as they appear in the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri. If I use a different text than that of the DDbDP, I record this in the footnote.

19Berger 1994–95.

20Abelson 1969.

21Graham and Gurr 1969, xxx.

22Lawrence 1970, 35.

23P.Oxy. 4.744.8–10. Cf. West 1998.

24Cribiore 2001, 65–73; Fischer-Elfert 2001, 439; Lazaridis 2010, 3.

25Cf. Gai. Inst. 3.222.

26Wheeler et al 2013.

27Chr.Mitt. 52.5–10.

28PSI 3.222.12–15.

29P.Wisc. 1.33.11.

30P.Oxy. 6.903.

31Taubenschlag 1955, 442–47; Evans 1992, 4.

32P.Oxy. 6.903.6.

33P.Enteux 72.5.

34E.g. P.Enteux 25.1.

35P.Oxy. 3.489.11.

36P.Oxy. 8.1120; cf. Bryen 2008, 192.

37BGU I.45.

38Németh 2012, 146.

39Daniel 1975, 255.

40P.Enteux 81.

41P.Enteux 78.5–6.

42P.Enteux 77.

43P.Oxy. 6.301.6; Chr.Mitt. 126 = P.Amh. 141; Chr.Mitt. 126.13, P.Lips. 1.37.22.

44P.Hamb. I.10

45P.Mich. 5.228.

46P.Oxy. 61.4122.

47P.Oxy. 58.3926.

48P.Cair.Isid. 63. Ol is variant of Horos.

49Vandorpe 2008.

50P.Enteux 72.

51BGU 3.909 = Chr.Wilck. 382.

52P.Mich. 3.174.

53P.Mich. 3.174.5–6. See Bryen 2013, 13.

54P.Oxy. 6.903.1; P.Enteux. 25, 74, 79, 86; P.Tebt. 3.765; SB 12.11130.15–17.

55Bryen 2008, 66; Gai. Inst. 3.220.

56SB 14.11274.9–10.

57SB 12.11130.15–17.

58P.Enteux 25.8.

59P.Wisc. 1.33.12–13.

60Fisher 1992, 493.

61Evans 1992, 4–5.

62Fisher 1995.

63P.Enteux 79.

64P.Oxy. 2.281.17–18.

65In ancient Egypt, urine was used in black magic and pregnancy tests (Shokeir and Hussein 1999). In the first century CE, the Romans recognized many uses for urine, including cleaning and whitening teeth and cleaning clothes. For the chemistry of urine in ancient Rome, see Witty 2016.

66Witty 2016.

67Plin. HN 9.39.

68“But drinking sweat and urine and a woman’s menstrual blood is outrageous and disgusting, and so are feces, no less than these.” (Gal. De temperamentis or The Temperaments and Powers of Simple Drugs 10.1 (translation: Lang 2012, 165).

69In Pharaonic Egypt, Halioua and Ziskind 2005; Ghalioungui, Khalil, and Ammar 1963. In Greco-Roman Egypt, Frankfurter 2006.

70Apollonios Mys, Euporista or Common Remedies (translation: Lang 2012, 166).

71Allen 1974, 91, 187 (Spells 116, 178)

72“Unas’s abomination is excrement, Unas rejects urine. Unas abominates his abomination. Unas’s abomination is these two: he does not eat the abomination of these two.” (translation: Allen 2005, 30).

73“My abomination is my abomination; I will not eat dung, I will not drink urine, nor walk upside down.” (translation: Allen 1974, 52).

74Allen 1974, spells 116 and 178, 91, 187.

75Ritner 1993, 150.

76Ritner 1993, 150.

77Bryen 2008, 185.

78P.Enteux 79; P.Fay. 12.12–13.

79Bryen 2008, 183–84.

80P.Fay. 12.12–20 (author’s translation).

81P.Oxy. 6.903.7.

82P.Flor. 3.309 = P.Lond. 3.983.

83P.Oxy. 6.903.1, 21.

84P.Flor. 3.309.1–4 = P.Lond. 3.983.

85P.Oxy. 6.903.21–22.

86P.Tebt. 3.1.768.

87SB 6.9421.8–11, 13–25.

88Bryen 2008, 194; Gow 1951.

89P.Mich. 18.793.2–5.

90P.Oxy. 6.903.

91P.Col. 8.242.45.

92P.Oxy. 6.903.32–7.

93P.Tebt. 2.283.9–10.

94P.Mich. 3.174.

95P.Tebt. 3.1.771.

96P.Tebt. 3.2.958.

97P.Tebt. 3.1.771.

98P.Oxy. 8.1120.

99Coles 1974, 184–85; Evans 1992, 5.

100Dossey 2008.

101John Chrys., In Epistulam I ad Corinthios Homiliae, xxvi.7.

102Evans 1992, 5.

103P.Enteux 75.

104P.Enteux 79.

105SB 24.16252.5.29–30.

106P.Tebt. 3.1.797.11–22.

107P.Tebt. 3.1.798.15–16.

108P.Tebt. 3.1.781.7–13.

109P.Tebt. 3.1.802.

110P.Tebt. 1.44.

111P.Mich. 5.229.

112On the front door and domestic pylon, see Abdelwahed and Abbas 2015.

113Evans 1992; Parca 2002.

114P.Enteux 79.

115P.Tebt. 3.1.793.11.1–15.

116Davoli, chapter 1, this volume; Alston, chapter 7, this volume.

117Cf. BGU 3.909 = Chr.Wilck. 382 (359 CE), where many eyewitnesses of a domestic act of violence at the house frontage were present.

118Evans 1992; Parca 2002.

119P.Oxy. 36.2758.

120P.Oxy. 36.2758.10; Hdt. 2.48; Plut. De Is. et Os. 7. See Husson 1983: 93–107.

121Husson 1983: 98–99.

122P.Tebt. 1.45.21–22; P.Tebt. 1.47.13–14.

123Husson 1983: 99. In P.Oxy. 6.903.20, it occurs as tas exō thyras.

124P.Oxy. 16.1966.14–15 (505 CE).

125P.Tebt. 3.795.7.

126Husson 1983, 99–100. This term should be distinguished from the aule (courtyard), which was the primary domestic space for food storage, preparation, and consumption, and household daily activities in the Roman Egyptian house (Alston, chapter 7, this volume).

127BGU 3.909 = Chr.Wilck. 382 (359 CE).

128P.Enteux 74.3–4.

129P.Tebt. 2.331.7–9.

130Abdelwahed 2016, 17–25.

131Husson 1983, 65–72.

132P.Enteux 25; P.Fay. 12.12–13; P.Mich. 3.174.21.

133P.Enteux 25.8.

134P.Fay. 12.12–13.

135P.Oxy. 8.1120.

136P.Tebt. 2.332.

137P.Oxy. 1.69.

138P.Oxy. 6.903.

139P.Oxy. 6.903.

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