The Impact of Justice on the Roman Empire discusses ways in which notions, practice and the ideology of justice impacted on the functioning of the Roman Empire. The papers assembled in this volume follow from the thirteenth workshop of the international network Impact of Empire. They focus on what was considered just in various groups of Roman subjects, how these views were legitimated, shifted over time, and how they affected policy making and political, administrative, and judicial practices. Linking all of the papers are three common themes: the emperor and justice, justice in a dispersed empire and differentiation of justice.
This volume presents the proceedings of the ninth workshop of the international network 'Impact of Empire', which concentrates on the history of the Roman Empire. It focuses on different ways in which Rome created, changed and influenced (perceptions of) frontiers.
This book makes the important but surprisingly under-explored argument that modern international law was built on the foundations of Roman law and Roman imperial practice. A pivotal figure in this enterprise was the Italian Protestant Alberico Gentili (1552-1608), the great Oxford Roman law scholar and advocate, whose books and legal opinions on law, war, empire, embassies and maritime issues framed the emerging structure of inter-state relations in terms of legal rights and remedies drawn from Roman law and built on Roman and scholastic theories of just war and imperial justice. The distinguished group of contributors examine the theory and practice of justice and law in Roman imperial wars and administration; Gentili's use of Roman materials; the influence on Gentili of Vitoria and Bodin and his impact on Grotius and Hobbes; and the ideas and influence of Gentili and other major thinkers from the 16th to the 18th centuries on issues such as preventive self-defence, punishment, piracy, Europe's political and mercantile relations with the Ottoman Empire, commerce and trade, European and colonial wars and peace settlements, reason of state, justice, and the relations between natural law and observed practice in providing a normative and operational basis for international relations and what became international law. This book explores ways in which both the theory and the practice of international politics was framed in ways that built on these Roman private law and public law foundations, including concepts of rights. This history of ideas has continuing importance as European ideas of international law and empire have become global, partly accepted and partly contested elsewhere in the world.
The Roman empire set law at the center of its very identity. A complex and robust ideology of law and justice is evident not only in the dynamics of imperial administration, but a host of cultural arenas. Citizenship named the privilege of falling under Roman jurisdiction, legal expertise was cultural capital. A faith in the emperor’s intimate concern for justice was a key component of the voluntary connection binding Romans and provincials to the state. Even as law was a central mechanism for control and the administration of state violence, it also exerted a magnetic effect on the peoples under its control. Adopting a range of approaches, the essays explore the impact of Roman law, both in the tribunal and in the culture. Unique to this anthology is attention to legal professionals and cultural intermediaries operating at the empire’s periphery. The studies here allow one to see how law operated among a range of populations and provincials—from Gauls and Brittons to Egyptians and Jews—exploring the ways local peoples creatively navigated, and constructed, their legal realities between Roman and local mores. They draw our attention to the space between laws and legal ideas, between ethnic, especially Jewish, life and law and the structures of Roman might; cases in which shared concepts result in diverse ends; the pageantry of the legal tribunal, the imperatives and corruptions of power differentials; and the importance of reading the gaps between depiction of law and its actual workings. This volume is unusual in bringing Jewish, and especially rabbinic, sources and perspectives together with Roman, Greek or Christian ones. This is the result of its being part of the research program “Judaism and Rome” (ERC Grant Agreement no. 614 424), dedicated to the study of the impact of the Roman empire upon ancient Judaism.
This book presents the legislation that formed the basis of Roman law - The Laws of the Twelve Tables. These laws, formally promulgated in 449 BC, consolidated earlier traditions and established enduring rights and duties of Roman citizens. The Tables were created in response to agitation by the plebeian class, who had previously been excluded from the higher benefits of the Republic. Despite previously being unwritten and exclusively interpreted by upper-class priests, the Tables became highly regarded and formed the basis of Roman law for a thousand years. This comprehensive sequence of definitions of private rights and procedures, although highly specific and diverse, provided a foundation for the enduring legal system of the Roman Empire.
In the aim to understand the place of law within the landscape of Roman life, this volume explores the interaction between judicial practices and the spaces in which they took place. Through an interdisciplinary approach, it offers a new, multifaceted picture of a key aspect of Roman culture.
Comprehensive and accessible, this book offers a concise synthesis of the evolution of the law in Western Europe, from ancient Rome to the beginning of the twentieth century. It situates law in the wider framework of Europe’s political, economic, social and cultural developments.
Summoned to the Roman Courts is the first work by Detlef Liebs, an internationally recognized expert on ancient Roman law, to be made available in English. Originally presented as a series of popular lectures, this book brings to life a thousand years of Roman history through sixteen studies of famous court cases—from the legendary trial of Horatius for the killing of his sister, to the trial of Jesus Christ, to that of the Christian leader Priscillian for heresy. Drawing on a wide variety of ancient sources, the author not only paints a vivid picture of ancient Roman society, but also illuminates how ancient legal practices still profoundly affect how the law is implemented today.
