Archivio di Babatha. Un'esperienza ai Confini Dell'impero Romano. Atti e Contratti (II Secolo D.C.)

The research examines several papyri bearing deeds or contracts dating back, for the most part, to the 2nd century d. C. The investigation represents the continuation, not only temporal, but also conceptual, of a previous one dedicated to the procedural aspects emerging from the Yadin papyri. In that seat, in fact, the application of the Roman process had been recognized, both in the ordinary form and in the extra ordinem form, in order to hypothesize the presence of legislation, increasingly stable and tendentially unifying between East and West, which would have foreseen Roman rules suitably adapted to the various contexts. This second study reveals the use of typical Roman negotiating models even in these extreme Hellenized provinces. From the analysis of the documentation, therefore, it was deduced that acts under Hellenistic or Jewish law, however compatible with the same Roman legal system, present clauses defined, within the investigation, as connecting clauses, since they perform the function of conveying the content of the deed within Roman schemes, such as the stipulatio or the obligatio litteris contracta. Their generic structure, in fact, could adapt to the most diverse negotia which, in this way, were protected with the related actions. It was a simple mechanism which, nevertheless, would have allowed the expansion of Roman law also in these territories, so much so that the stipulation over time would have become synonymous with 'contract'. Looking more closely at this complex legal phenomenon, it was possible to trace a line of development inherent in the function of writing. Thus, in Hadrian's time, if for the stipulatio it is valid ad probationem, for paper bonds, the document also has a constitutive effect and, in some cases, a disposition, favoring the circulation of credit. The internal distinction is not always easy, since it takes place entirely on the level of interpretation of the clauses and evidence. The framework that thus emerges is characterized by a syncretism that involves all aspects of life, religious, social, linguistic, but which finds its ultimate connection in the norms and models established by the scientia iuris on the one hand and by the imperium principis for another.