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Le recours à l’arbitrage privé dans les actes d’affranchissement delphiques

  • Dominique Mulliez
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Sidelights on Greek Antiquity
This chapter is in the book Sidelights on Greek Antiquity

Abstract

Private arbitration is an alternative procedure to resolving disputes, through which the parties agree to endeavour to seek a compromise. It is well attested in Athens thanks to the corpus of Attic orators, as well as in Greco-Roman Egypt, and with similar characteristics: prior compromise, which determines the conditions of the arbitration, appointment of arbitrators in varying numbers, contradictory debate in the presence of the arbitrators, sentence without appeal, which may be accompanied by an oath. After presenting the main features of this procedure in each of these two documentary sets, the article establishes the corpus - with translation - of ten Delphic manumissions that mention the use of private arbitration within and only within the framework of a paramone clause. The main features of the procedure at Delphi are the same. Included in the contract, the preliminary compromise invariably establishes at three the number of arbitrators, designated by common agreement between the master and his manumitted slave; these may be appointed as soon as the contract is concluded and, in this case, the procedure for replacing a defaulting member is provided; at the end of the adversarial debate in front of the arbitrators, the award, sometimes guaranteed by an oath, is enforceable. The use of private arbitration remains exceptional in Delphi (10 examples from a corpus of 1273 contracts from 200 BC to the end of the 1st c. AD). While it is a procedure undeniably weighted in favour of the manumitted slave, there are, however, several indications that the agreement between the master and his freed slave is not an interpares agreement. Moreover, it is no longer met with beyond of the middle of the 2nd c. BC: in the conclusion, some suggestions for this abandonment are put forward.

Abstract

Private arbitration is an alternative procedure to resolving disputes, through which the parties agree to endeavour to seek a compromise. It is well attested in Athens thanks to the corpus of Attic orators, as well as in Greco-Roman Egypt, and with similar characteristics: prior compromise, which determines the conditions of the arbitration, appointment of arbitrators in varying numbers, contradictory debate in the presence of the arbitrators, sentence without appeal, which may be accompanied by an oath. After presenting the main features of this procedure in each of these two documentary sets, the article establishes the corpus - with translation - of ten Delphic manumissions that mention the use of private arbitration within and only within the framework of a paramone clause. The main features of the procedure at Delphi are the same. Included in the contract, the preliminary compromise invariably establishes at three the number of arbitrators, designated by common agreement between the master and his manumitted slave; these may be appointed as soon as the contract is concluded and, in this case, the procedure for replacing a defaulting member is provided; at the end of the adversarial debate in front of the arbitrators, the award, sometimes guaranteed by an oath, is enforceable. The use of private arbitration remains exceptional in Delphi (10 examples from a corpus of 1273 contracts from 200 BC to the end of the 1st c. AD). While it is a procedure undeniably weighted in favour of the manumitted slave, there are, however, several indications that the agreement between the master and his freed slave is not an interpares agreement. Moreover, it is no longer met with beyond of the middle of the 2nd c. BC: in the conclusion, some suggestions for this abandonment are put forward.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Preface V
  3. Contents XI
  4. List of Figures XIII
  5. Tabula Gratulatoria XIX
  6. Vasileios Petrakos: A Life Dedicated to the Service of Greek Archaeology XXIII
  7. Part I: Epigraphy and Ancient History
  8. Thucydides, Historical Geography and the ‘Lost Years’ of Perdikkas II 3
  9. Athens, Samothrace, and the Mysteria of the Samothracian Great Gods 17
  10. De quelques épitaphes d’étrangers et d’étrangères au Musée d’Érétrie 45
  11. Φυτωνυμικά τοπωνύμια Κωμών της Αργολίδος 103
  12. Le recours à l’arbitrage privé dans les actes d’affranchissement delphiques 117
  13. Προξενικό ψήφισμα από την Αιτωλία 137
  14. Women’s Religion in Hellenistic Athens 145
  15. Notes on Athenian Decrees in the Later Hellenistic Period 159
  16. “Those Who Jointly Built the City” 179
  17. Part II: Archaeology
  18. Attica and the Origins of Silver Metallurgy in the Aegean and the Carpatho-Balkan Zone 197
  19. Cultural Variation in Mycenaean Attica. A Mesoregional Approach 227
  20. Mythical and Historical Heroic Founders: The Archaeological Evidence 299
  21. Das Volutenkapitell aus Sykaminos 321
  22. Dionysos Lenaios at Rhamnous. Lenaia ἐν ἀγροῖς and the “Lenaia vases” 359
  23. Philoktet in Attika 383
  24. Part III: History of Greek Archaeology
  25. Peiraieus in 1805 411
  26. Karl Otfried Müller in Marathon, Rhamnus und Oropos 423
  27. Spyridon Marinatos and Carl Blegen at Pylos: A Happy Collaboration 441
  28. Vassilis Petrakos et les fouilles suisses d’Érétrie 451
  29. List of Contributors 465
  30. Index of Epigraphical Texts 469
  31. Index Locorum 477
  32. Index of Mythological Names 483
  33. Index of Geographic Names (Place Names, Ethnic and Demotic Adjectives) 485
  34. Index of Ancient Personal Names 499
  35. Index Rerum 505
  36. Index of Modern Personal Names 515
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