PRESTITIA INTERESSE E ‘MUTUO FITTIZIO CON VENDITA FIDUCIARIA’ NELL’EGITTO ROMANO NUOVE ESEGESI DEI CHIROGRAFI DI ANTONIVS HERONIANVS (PMICH. VII 438 E PFOUAD I 45) CHIROGRAPHVM E STIPVLATIO NELLA PRASSI DOCUMENTALE E NELLA GIURISPRUDENZA

Abstract

INTEREST LOANS AND ‘FICTIOUS MORTAGE WITH FIDUCIARY SALE’ IN ROMAN EGYPT.
NEW EXEGESIS OF CHIROGRAPHS OF ANTONIVS HERONIANVS (PMIC. VII 438 AND PFOUAD I 45).
CHIROGRAH AND STIPVLATIO IN DOCUMENTAL PRACTICE AND IN JURISPRUDENCE
Two money loan chirographa in Latin by the same debtor, Antonius Heronianus, from the 140p (PMich. VII 438) and 153 p (PFouad I 45)
are examined, thanks to new readings and through an interdisciplinary analysis between prosopography, social status and citizenship of the contractors,
Ptolemaic law and Roman law. The first is so far the only chirographum in Egypt to which is added a stipulatio / sponsio, due to the fact
that the creditor, Julius Serenus, was a Roman citizen with good legal knowledge, so much so that he was probably the same person that a few
years later he entered the Council of the Prefect of Alexandria and Egypt. However, the quiritary sponsio was requested only for the capital,
while the wear was provided exclusively in the chirograph without indicating the interest rate. The reason for this seems to be that they were exorbitant
compared to the legal rate and had probably been deducted in advance. New decipherments of the text of PFouad I 45 allow us to understand
some anomalies in the form of this fictitious mortgage with trust sale of the arms by the creditor / seller Stlaccius Antistianus, decurion of
the same Dem(etrian?) auxiliary cavalry wing of the debtor in the II legion Traiana Fortis. The chirographum is equipped with the debtor’s signature
and the signatures of two witnesses: the first is the keeper of the weapons of the same legion and writes in Greek; the second writes in Latin
declaring to have been present in the camp at the time of writing the contract. In general, the signatures of the witnesses conclude the act, but
is added here a summary in Greek, which constitutes a diplomatic anomaly. The new decipherment and the relative proposed additions allow to
explain this anomaly: in the handwritten subscription the debtor had failed to remember the interests on the loan, while the chirographum had
been written in his name by a Latin scribe, who had foreseen the legal interests with a pactum adiectum in continenti. The Greek scribe adds a
summary, in which he recalls the agreed interests and their legal amount in relation to the capital. Finally, all the elements of conformity or discrepancy
of the documents with respect to the formal and contractual types of loan of money in Roman Italy and in the eastern and western provinces
of the empire in the I-II century after Christ are examined.