better understand the workings of this process: while most of the Euhemeria petitions were subscribed by the epistates phylakiton and sent on to the archephodos with instructions that the archephodos “arrest” the malefactors and thus begin legal proceedings, Ision’s petition has no subscription.57 In other words, it appears that Ision’s claim of violence was rejected. One way to frame this would be to say that local authorities decided that what Onnophris had used was merely justifiable force, not unacceptable violence, and he used it against a slave who deserved it, not a man who had rights worth taking the state’s time in defending. Presumably Chairemon, Ision’s owner, could try again by suing Onnophris for damages, but in such a case Ision would be presumed to be a piece of property, not a man.
The second example is not papyrological, but comes instead from the jurisprudential literature. (Here it bears adding that Roman jurisprudence was not a hermetically sealed and independent tradition of thought, but was instead forged in tandem with empire.) The passage in question comes from the Digest, and is woven together from excerpts of Ulpian’s and Paulus’ commentaries On the Edict (both from the third century, but here discussing the opinion of Salvius Julianus, who worked in the second century). In book 9 of the Digest the opinions of the jurists are set out on the question of Aquilian liability, namely, the relationship of obligation that results from unlawfully causing harm to slaves and chattels. But the text then turns to the case of teachers, and a teacher who kills or wounds a slave during a lesson. Here the jurists are certain that the teacher is liable under the Aquilian law if he kills or wounds the slave, but the jurists then turn to the question of how to deal with a teacher in the case where he uses violence against his free-born charges: sutor, inquit, puero discenti ingenuo filio familias, parum bene facienti quod demonstraverit, forma calcei cervicem percussit, ut oculus puero perfunderetur. Dicit igitur Iulianus iniuriarum quidem actionem non competere, quia non faciendae iniuriae causa percusserit, sed monendi et docendi causa: an ex locato, dubitat, quia levis dumtaxat castigatio concessa est docenti: sed lege Aquilia posse agi non dubito: (Paulus libro 22 ad edictum) praeceptoris enim nimia saevitia culpae adsignatur.
The second example is not papyrological, but comes instead from the jurisprudential literature. (Here it bears adding that Roman jurisprudence was not a hermetically sealed and independent tradition of thought, but was instead forged in tandem with empire.) The passage in question comes from the Digest, and is woven together from excerpts of Ulpian’s and Paulus’ commentaries On the Edict (both from the third century, but here discussing the opinion of Salvius Julianus, who worked in the second century). In book 9 of the Digest the opinions of the jurists are set out on the question of Aquilian liability, namely, the relationship of obligation that results from unlawfully causing harm to slaves and chattels. But the text then turns to the case of teachers, and a teacher who kills or wounds a slave during a lesson. Here the jurists are certain that the teacher is liable under the Aquilian law if he kills or wounds the slave, but the jurists then turn to the question of how to deal with a teacher in the case where he uses violence against his free-born charges:
sutor, inquit, puero discenti ingenuo filio familias, parum bene facienti quod demonstraverit, forma calcei cervicem percussit, ut oculus puero perfunderetur. Dicit igitur Iulianus iniuriarum quidem actionem non competere, quia non faciendae iniuriae causa percusserit, sed monendi et docendi causa: an ex locato, dubitat, quia levis dumtaxat castigatio concessa est docenti: sed lege Aquilia posse agi non dubito: (Paulus libro 22 ad edictum) praeceptoris enim nimia saevitia culpae adsignatur.
He (Julianus) says: a shoemaker, in the course of teaching a freeborn boy who was a son-in-power, struck his (the boy’s) neck with a shoe last, since the boy did not sufficiently perform the task he was taught. But as a result, the boy’s eye was knocked out. Julianus said that the action for iniuria does not apply, since he did not hit the boy with the object of causing injury, but with the object of teaching and admonishing. He doubts whether the action on hire applies, since the right of lightly chastising is granted to teachers. But I do not doubt that the Lex Aquilia applies: (Paulus, On the Edict book 22) since an excess of brutality on the part of the teacher is a reason for assigning fault.58
The Digest passage is interesting, not least because it mirrors certain moves that were made in defining the relationship between Ision and Onnophris. In the case discussed by the jurists, the question is put as to the nature of the relationship that occurs when there is violence between two free men who have unequal degrees of power over one another. The question, put in one form, is whether the striking of the child should count as violence or as force; certainly teachers have the right to strike the children they teach: so long as this is done for the purpose of “teaching and admonishing,” this is justifiable force, and no further relationship results between the two parties. But Ulpian and Paul do think that a claim can be made for Aquilian damages, if only as an actio utilis,59 if the instructor’s violence crosses from acceptable to brutal. But in this case a series of wires have to be crossed for the legal operation to proceed properly: the praetor would write up a formula for Aquilian damages, and the judge would have to decide whether such a line had been crossed. But this would presumably require treating the free pupil through a fiction as though he were a slave, and allowing the suit to his father in his capacity—again fictional—as the boy’s “owner.”60 The jurists’ moves in this argument reflect the same kind of intellectual slippage—though this time in the opposite direction—as that which prevails in the quarrel between Ision and Onnophris, and raises, however obliquely, a set of questions as to what kinds of relationships (of personal status and of obligation) can or must be assumed when the term “violence” (here, iniuria, a term I will return to below) is applied to certain kinds of acts. Here the injury to the boy cannot be characterized as violence between free and independent men (iniuria), for they are incapable of having a relationship of equals, at least in the sense that violence is prohibited between equal men, for here the right to harm lightly and for the purpose of correction is granted to one of them; nor, for the same reasons, as a relationship of contract (since the teacher was allowed, under such a contract, to use limited amounts of force); instead, the last available option is to treat the boy as a damaged slave, and allow his father—like Chairemon in the imagined alternative to the case of Ision—to sue under the Lex Aquilia. Were the boy in question not an imaginary construct of the jurists, one would imagine that he, like Ision, would have felt this to have been an affront to his dignity.
From here we can return to the question of how violence is best understood as an ethical label, and propose that the force/violence distinction I discussed above can be reappropriated as a methodological guideline for the study of violence: more than just an artifact of divergent scholarly traditions, the English distinction between (potentially justifiable or morally neutral) force and (unjustifiable) violence is precisely what is at stake in defining the relations between Ision and Onnophris and the shoemaker and his pupil, and is central for understanding the scope of the term “violence” in the papyrological evidence in general. And there is a good deal at stake in this distinction, in two senses. First, violence—or the ability, legally speaking, to feel pain as a result of violence—is intimately connected with ideas of personhood. I will deal with this more momentarily, but for the moment it will suffice to say that personhood is also connected to the ability to enter into certain kinds of interpersonal relationships, in particular, the relationship that results (or does not result) from an act of violence or force. To wit: someone can be “forced” to do something legitimate or justified—to pay taxes, to abide by the terms of a contract, or to make a shoe properly.61 Once the force has been applied, provided it is justified, the relationship between the two individuals is over. The taxes have been paid or the shoe stretched correctly, and the government or the teacher does not subsequently owe that individual recompense for having had to resort to force. But when someone commits an act of violence—or when someone labels someone else’s actions as an act of violence—there is a claim of a subsequent relationship between the individuals in question. Violence opens avenues of redress, but additionally creates and transforms individual relationships, construing victim and violator as legal equals bound together through obligations. The offender subsequently owes something
