Violence in Roman Egypt. Ari Z. Bryen

and fiction, like obligation, are powerful metaphors, and they work in multiple directions. What matters in the case of a petition is not some underlying truth or reality of what actually happened, nor simply the ability of the words in the petition to move a higher power to sympathy. What ultimately matters is what comes to be accepted as truth in a particular moment in a particular society. And this is precisely what is interesting about law. When people framed their narratives about wounded bodies and personal pain, they were setting administrative wheels in motion, and they and the people they accused would subsequently be responsible for details placed in their narrations. The reason why this worked was that by translating some version of their painful experiences into the proper legal categories, by writing them up in petitions that would be passed around to high officials, petitioners thereby made those feelings and experiences “true”—because, at least in some sense, the truth of law is capable of flattening out the truth of facts and experience.⁶⁹ Traduttore, traditore, of course, and this is precisely the power of these narratives, and why people sought refuge in them in the wake of violence.

      PART II

      From the Language of Pain to the Language of Law

      CHAPTER 4

      Narrating Injury