Shocking behaviour in Roman Egypt.

[bunn]

Now concerning the insulting allegations he made about me: he shut up his own daughters and mine, along with my foster daughters and his agent and his son for seven whole days in his cellars, and treated his slaves and my slave Zoe violently, virtually killing them with blows. He stripped my foster-daughters naked and set fire to them, in complete violation of the law.

I'm really quite glad to hear that all of this was 'in violation of the law'.   At least, I'm assuming that the whole thing was contrary to the laws, not just the foster-daughter-roasting part of it. 

" And he kept on saying that 'a month from now I'm going to take a mistress for myself'"

You really would think that the mistress part of things would simply be a relief after the first paragraph. 

From here

Comments

[ningloreth.livejournal.com]

How would you set fire to someone? Especially after you'd stripped them? I wonder if he burned them with a candle or similar, rather than actually setting fire to them? Translations like this always seem so clunky and disjointed, it must be that we don't get the idioms-- like the 'in (precisely) one month' thing.

The other things that strike me are that they each have their own property (including foster-children) and that they're Christian! ETA: Or, at least she is...

And he really, really hates her!

The weekend was a bit of a washout as far as illustrations went, but I do have some bits and bobs I can build on...

[inamac.livejournal.com]

To 'set fire' to something has two meanings in English, let alone the original language. Maybe he surrounded them with faggots preparatory to burning - 'setting' a fire rather than actually torching them?

Not that this makes her complaint any less awful.

[ningloreth.livejournal.com]

That's a point. I was assuming that they were still in the cellars, but it doesn't explicitly say that. Though I suppose he might have been crazy enough to built a pyre under his own house!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Well, this particular sample is 4th century, so yes, I think they'd mostly be Coptic Christians by then. I just stumbled over it looking for documentation about divorce and thought it needed a wider audience!

Arg, the story has now breached the 9000 word mark and I still have no idea how to end it!