ABSTRACT
In Late Antiquity, the majority of judicial documents on papyrus were petitions. They were written by professional scribes who knew all the rhetorical devices necessary to expose clearly the facts and to persuade, in this pre-trial stage, the judge to prosecute the case. Although late petitions changed in style and form between the fourth and sixth centuries, the victims of injustice still had a tendency to present themselves as “poor”, as the oppressed demanding justice. A. Kovelman even argued that there was a “typification of the conflict” between rich and poor in fourth-century petitions: “the petitioner is always a ‘moderate', honest and poor man, while the offender is always a ‘powerful man'. Moreover, the figures of the poor and the oppressed had a very long history in ancient Near Eastern ideologies of power: “to give ‘justice' to the ‘poor' was a sign of royal energy”.
