Forgive and Forget? Amnesty in the Ancient World

Amnesty as an institutionally imposed act of "Forgiving and Forgetting" is nowadays practised in various fields. Whether it is granted due to security, domestic or financial policy reasons, the freedom and escape from punishment are always in stark contrast to the individual`s compelling responsibility as the basis of our judicial system as well as to the demand for retribution and social peace. This legal institute is not only terminologically harking back to ancient times but also technically. Similar measures are attested throughout the whole of antiquity. Fifteen well known authors from Germany, Great Britain and Austria, all of them experts in different fields and epochs of Ancient History, present their papers in this volume. They contribute to the history of the Ancient Near East, pharaonic Egypt, Greek and Roman Legal History, archaic and classical Greece, Hellenistic times, ancient Italic history, the Roman Republic, early and high imperial times and Late Antiquity. Each of them treats the general topic in a special perspective, either as a detailed study of an exemplary case, or as broad survey of a given period of time. All categories of primary sources, i.e. literary and juridical, epigraphical and papyrological have been taken into account. Thus the basis for an intensive analysis of questions of amnesty and abolition from the Ancient Near East to Late Antiquity has been laid for the first time, enabling the volume to provide a typology of amnesties and the reader to follow common structures throughout the centuries.

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