Two Types of Document
The Romans used two types of document: the testatio and the chirographum. The testatio was a record: it was objective, expressed in the third person, and attested that something had taken place.
Its evidential value rested solely on the participation of the witnesses: their seals on the string not only secured the integrity of the text on the closed sides 2 and 3 but also, more importantly, their seals attested that what the writing stated had taken place before their very eyes. (The names of the witnesses appeared in the genitive next to their seals, usually on the right of side 4, written in ink and parallel to the long side of the tablet.) The witness did not need to remember the contents of the document: as long as he recognized the seal as his own, he supplied the evidence that what the text of the document reported had actually taken place. So the testatio was a combination of proof by means of document and by means of witnesses.1The chirograph was quite different. It was a declaration made by the author of the document and was intended to provide proof - to be used against him - that he had made the declaration in question. The declaration was subjective, in the first person, and had to be written by the person making it in his own hand. The probative value of the chirograph resided in the fact that it guaranteed that the writing was a declaration made by its author. To strengthen this guarantee, the author of the document often added his seal below the writing as well. Witnesses were not needed in order to give the chirograph probative value, but usually they were used in any case. But while in the case of a testatio seven or more witnesses were involved in sealing the internal text, for a chirograph it was unusual to have more than three.
The author of the document always put his own seal on the string, often twice. If he was a slave, his owner usually added his seal too. For the chirograph the primary function of the seal was to secure the internal text and especially to protect it from forgery at the hand of the recipient of the document. Beyond that the seals could not in fact guarantee anything more than did the writing in the author’s own hand and his own seal, namely that he really had written the internal text.A person who was illiterate could have a trusted person or a slave write for him. Generally the writer of the document recorded that he had prepared it on request or following an order. The writer was then the author of the document, but, if the illiterate person added his seal under the internal text or on the string that bound it, it was still evidence against him. Women generally had their chirographs written by others.
We know nothing about the procedure for creating these documents. Almost without exception the Transylvanian and the new Pompeian documents appear not to have been created ad hoc; instead they usually follow tried and tested formulae in which every word was fixed. The formulae did have to be completed with variables such as date and place, names, amounts, and time-limits, and they could also be adjusted to fit individual requirements. Probably the actual text for the document was drafted before the document was itself prepared. A testatio could clearly be written in advance, and then what it recorded could be witnessed and the document read out and sealed. In the case of a chirograph, the author of the document could write a pre-prepared text on the tablets in front of witnesses. He could copy that from a draft or it could be dictated to him either from a draft or from the external text that had already been prepared: sometimes we do find that the writing of the external text is in a different hand from that of the internal text.
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