ABSTRACT
We learn from Libanius’ oration 45 (De vinctis) that conditions in prisons in Late Antiquity were very difficult..1 Many of Libanius’ details, such as the provision of food by relatives or the fact that the prisoners were kept in chains, can also be traced in the Greek and Coptic papyri from Late Antique Egypt, which are in some way closer to reality than the literary sources and provide a fairly clear picture of the situation in Late Antique prisons..2 In this paper, I will discuss the evidence that we can retrieve from the papyri regarding violence in the process of arrest and incarceration from the fourth to the seventh centuries CE.3
