Making Justice: Justin Martyr and a Curse From Amathous, Cyprus

Abstract

Abstract At the beginning of Justin’s Apology, an account of injustice, Justin calls upon the emperors as ϕύλακες δικαιοσύνης, “guardians of justice.” Justin, 1 Apologia 2,2 (OECT, 80,13 Minns/Parvis). As part of a documentary and legal strategy, Justin’s Apology includes what he claims is an imperial rescript. This paper probes Justin’s Apology and its appended document(s) in relation to other contemporaneous strategies and materializations of seeking justice: appeals and imperial rescripts, on the one hand, and defixiones or “prayers for justice,” on the other. It argues that a cosmology of δαίμονες was activated not only by Justin, who awaits the imminent end of the world, but also by the curses of antiquity. These curses, and Justin’s own libellus or βιβλίδιον, must also be understood as paralegal materials reasonably intended to engage capricious and sometimes violent systems of justice.