Local Law under Rome offers a comprehensive view of local legal cultures in the Roman East during the first three centuries CE. As the following examples demonstrate, subordinate legal cultures exhibit characteristic features: They integrate into their surrounding plurality of laws through a high degree of hybridity, they are compelled to adjust to Imperial standards of legal administration, while at the same time providing a distinctive local alternative. Through its comprehensive database platform the project seeks to establish that various local traditions cannot be studied independently, but rather within a reality of entangled legalities. 

The Archive of Babatha

The archive of the Jewish woman Babatha was found in a cave in the Judean desert, where she was probably killed during the Bar Kokhba revolt against Rome (135 CE). The documents in this archive clearly demonstrate the combination of legal practices, Jewish, Greek and Roman, applied by the local population, sometimes all within the same document. While she kept in her archive her traditional aramaic marriage contract (precisely fitting rabbinic standards), alongside a Greek marriage contract “in accordance with Greek custom”, she also  prepared a Greek version of the Latin formula for an action on guardianship in the governor’s court. In other cases, the documents refer explicitly  that their stipulations are “according to the laws”, but would their owners identify their source? How did local law experts deal with this legal hybridity?

Choice of Judges

During the mid-second century in different parts of the Roman Empire, local communities adopted a specific feature of Roman legal procedure: the right to choose and reject listed judges so as to arrive at an agreed tribunal. This procedure is detailed in the municipal law of the Roman colony of Irni in Spain (Lex Irnitana), but is also included in a decree of the non-Roman city Chersonesus (SEG 55.838), on the northern shore of the Black Sea. Even the rabbis choose to adopt this element in their own construction of their court system (Mishnah Sanhedrin 3.1). Why did local communities choose to adopt this aspect of the Roman model of legal administration while shaping their own forms of adjudication?

The Case of Dionysia

As a rule, Romans officials sought to judge the local population according to their own rules. This principle is familiar from Trajan’s instructions to Pliny (Ep. 10.113), was followed in Egypt as well, where all groups were compelled to rely on Roman courts (P.Oxy. xlii 3015: “κάλλιστόν ἐστιν αὐτοὺς δικαιοδοτεῖν πρός τοὺς Αἰγυπτίων νόμους”). At the same time, these Roman judges had discretion to reject local traditions, when these did not fit their Roman values. Such a case is provided in a petition of Dionysia against her father Chaeremon, who sought to force her to divorce so he could receive back his property. Roman humanitas could not accept this attempt to eliminate the daughter’s choice. On the other hand, the Rabbis explicitly encourage turning to Roman courts in order to force a husband to release his wife who wants to divorce him. How then could Local communities ensure preservation of their traditional customs and values as they negotiated them with Roman officials?