Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Documents

All but [26] and parts of [14, 17] (in Greek) were originally written in Latin.

A Note on Names

Male Roman citizens had three names, and they normally used all three in formal, legal contexts, like “Gaius Sulpicius Faustus” and “Lucius Faenius Eumenes” in the first document. The mid dle of the three is a clan name, shared by (among others) people with a shared male ancestor, as well as by the former slaves of that family (who, as ex-slaves, are themselves citizens; see Chapter 10). In these texts, the third name is the most distinc tive and is often used to identify individuals. Women typically have two names, one of which is the feminine form of their clan name. (So the sisters of the men just named would have “Sulpicia” and “Faenia” in their names, respectively.) Non-Romans typically have a single name. Free aliens of either sex are identified by the combination of their own name, their father’s name, and their city of origin, like “Zenon of Tyre” in the second text. Slaves are identified by their own name and that of their owner. Ex-slaves, of whatever nationality, are often identified by their former owner’s name, though we can’t really tell if that is always the case. Most names in the documents ending in -us, -os, or -es belong to men; those ending in -a (except Arpocra in [4] ) or in -is are women’s.

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