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BANDITS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
the detection and sentencing of miscreants, i.e., that they acted as both policemen
and judges. This could have happened in the case of petty crimes, like
the ones examined here, but the basics of the supposition are disputed. 110 For
detection the superintendent of police could call upon subordinate officials.
Text no. 127, quoted in full above, mentions an archephodos, to whom the
epistates phylakiton, as his superior, delegates the task of apprehending the
guilty parties. 111 In another instance (no. 142), the recipient is a centurion
and the wording of the petition for further action differs from the usual
pattern. However, since we know that in later periods military personnel,
especially centurions, were entrusted with police work as a matter of course,
what we have here is an indication of the gradual transformation of the
Ptolemaic administrative system under Rome. 112
The reported crimes allow a glimpse into the social and economic conditions
obtaining in rural Egypt under the early Principate. Almost half the
cases of attested crime concern theft of animals, wheat and field-produce.
Twice we hear of a pig being taken (nos. 124, 140), once a female ass (no.
145). There are three cases in which hay was stolen (nos. 129, 135, 142), on
more than one occasion in such amounts that sumpter-mules were used to
carry it off. One victim complains about the repeated stripping of his olive
trees (no. 130); and illegal grazing by shepherds on pasturelands that were
not their property forms the substance of nine statements (nos. 126, 131–2;
138; 141; 143; 147; 149; 152).
The kinds of thing that went on in this area of crime are well known from
Roman legal texts – from the Twelve Tables (8.12ff.) to imperial rescripts of
the Late Empire. In unsophisticated peasant communities the typical offence
was abigeatus, cattle thieving. For example, Hadrian instructed the provincial
council of Baetica in a rescript that abigei, ‘reivers’, should be punished
‘with all severity’ (durissime), i.e., even with death by execution (ad gladium),
since this sort of crime was frequent in the region. 113 In 364, Valentinian I
forbade all inhabitants of southern Italy who were not members of the ordines
(i.e., not formally designated as ‘respectable’ members of society) or of the
armed forces from owning horses or other riding animals. Even the possession
of a horse, so he declared in the preamble, would constitute grounds for
suspicion of cattle theft and justify punishment as an abigeus: the typical
over-reaction of a state that was over-reaching itself by its involvement with
social matters. 114
According to the depositions, crimes in Euhemeria were mostly committed
leistrikoi tropoi, ‘bandit fashion’. This is a standard wording, frequently
employed, that says nothing about the use of violence. As already explained,
in Roman as in modern law the crime of robbery occurred only when removal
of property not belonging to the perpetrator was accompanied by
violence against the person. The Roman jurist, Ulpian, declared that there
was a clear distinction between robbery and theft in that, while anyone
could steal without coercion, robbery was always associated with the use
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