Note 219 — Chapter XII · EGYPT.

Unmistakably the iuridicus Aegypti (C. I. L. x. 6976; also missus in Aegyptum ad iurisdictionem, Bull. dell’ Inst. 1856, p. 142; iuridicus Alexandreae, C. vi. 1564, viii. 8925, 8934; Dig. i. 20, 2), and the idiologus ad Aegyptum (C. x. 4862; procurator ducenarius Alexandriae idiulogu, Eph. cp. v. p. 30, and C. I. Gr. 3751; ὁ γνώμων τοῦ ἰδίου λόγου, C. I. Gr. 4957, v. 44, comp. v. 39), are modelled on the assistants associated with the legates of the imperial provinces for the administration of justice (legati iuridici) and the finances (procuratores provinciae; Staatsrecht 12, p. 223, note 5). That they were appointed for the whole land, and were subordinate to the praefectus Aegypti, is stated by Strabo expressly (xvii. 1, 12, p. 797), and this assumption is required by the frequent mention of Egypt in their style and title as well as by the turn in the edict C. I. Gr. 4957, v. 39. But their jurisdiction was not exclusive; “many processes,” says Strabo, “are decided by the official administering justice” (that he assigned guardians, we learn from Dig. i. 20, 2), and according to the same it devolved on the Idiologus in particular to confiscate for the exchequer the bona vacantia et caduca.—This does not exclude the view that the Roman iuridicus came in place of the older court of thirty with the ἀρχιδικαστής at its head (Diodorus, i. 75), who was Egyptian, and may not be confounded with the Alexandrian ἀρχιδικαστής, had moreover perhaps been set aside already before the Roman period, and that the Idiologus originated out of the subsistence in Egypt of a claim of the king on heritages, such as did not occur to the same extent in the rest of the empire, which latter view Lumbroso (Recherches, p. 285) has made very probable.