Last Wills and Hellenistic Statehood: The Testament of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II (SEG IX 7) (20 min)

Presenters

Luuk de Boer, Bilkent University

Abstract

In this paper, I will discuss the testament of Ptolemy VIII as a document whose conceptual implications allow for a renewed reflection on the problem of statehood and constitutional law. I shall argue that the testament articulates a concept of the state modeled on the legal institution of the will: used to dispose of one’s personal possessions after death, the will offered the conceptual means with which the state could be presented as entirely belonging to, even coinciding with, the sovereign. This talk thus aims to take Ptolemy’s will seriously not as an example of a private will or as a legal instrument weaponized in the context of fraternal strife, but as offering new insights into the interaction of ancient legal institutions and political thought.

The use of a will for royal succession is neither new nor unknown by the time Ptolemy VIII inscribed his testament (probably 155 B.C.E.). Perhaps inspired by Alexander, the royal will assumes the status of a commonplace in the Hellenistic and Roman period. Yet Ptolemy’s will takes up a special place in this corpus: epigraphically inscribed, it is the only will of which we have more than a literary summary. To the extent that the will is discussed in scholarship, however, it is either as a document of interest for the political history of Rome and the late Ptolemies or for the legal history of Hellenistic and Roman wills. It is a testimony to the gulf separating both worlds that no one has asked why a will could be used to bequeath a kingdom in the first place. At the same time, research on theories of the state in antiquity has never paid attention to Ptolemy’s will and the role of legal institutions, like the testament or adoption, remains underexplored.

To reverse this trend, the talk starts with a close examination of the inscription and its physical setting. Via a discussion of its legal clauses in conjunction with other epigraphically attested wills, we will then explore the inscription as an attempt to enlist the private legal instrument of the will in a public, even constitutional context. This exploration will be strengthened by a subsequent review of the tradition of royal wills sketched above, in tandem with a discussion of the transforming purposes of the testament in antiquity. Via a discussion of scholarship on the connections between legal institutions and political thought, finally, we will attempt to grasp the conceptual stakes of using this private legal instrument in a constitutional setting. The answer should be found in the affordance of a newly developed notion of the testament: now an instrument with which to posthumously dispose of private property, it allowed Ptolemy VIII to present the state as only his.

  AIA-8A