Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- ROMAN LAW AND THE LEGAL WORLD OF THE ROMANS
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Roman History – The Brief Version
- 3 Sources of Roman Law
- 4 Sources for Roman Law
- 5 The Legal Professions
- 6 Legal Education
- 7 Social Control
- 8 Legal (In)equality
- 9 Writing and the Law
- 10 Status
- 11 Civil Procedure
- 12 Contracts
- 13 Ownership and Possession
- 14 Other Rights over Property
- 15 Inheritance
- 16 Women and Property
- 17 Family Law
- 18 Delict
- 19 Crimes and Punishments
- 20 Religious Law
- 21 Law in the Provinces
- 22 Conclusion
- Documents
- Glossary
- Further Reading
- Index
22 - Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- ROMAN LAW AND THE LEGAL WORLD OF THE ROMANS
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Roman History – The Brief Version
- 3 Sources of Roman Law
- 4 Sources for Roman Law
- 5 The Legal Professions
- 6 Legal Education
- 7 Social Control
- 8 Legal (In)equality
- 9 Writing and the Law
- 10 Status
- 11 Civil Procedure
- 12 Contracts
- 13 Ownership and Possession
- 14 Other Rights over Property
- 15 Inheritance
- 16 Women and Property
- 17 Family Law
- 18 Delict
- 19 Crimes and Punishments
- 20 Religious Law
- 21 Law in the Provinces
- 22 Conclusion
- Documents
- Glossary
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
Ibegan this book with one Roman's mixed feelings about the law. For him, Roman law was both one of the great and distinctive accomplishments of human civilization and a somewhat trivial game played by geeks for (at best) their own entertainment or (at worst) the legitimization of all kinds of mischief and even theft. The contexts in which Cicero was speaking suggest that both of his prejudices were widely held, at least in the elite circles in which he moved. He doesn't, that is, tell us about all Romans. In a sense, moreover, the texts I quoted there are largely theoretical. That is, one of them is entirely detached from any individual transaction or legal proceeding, and the other comes up only incidentally in the course of a trial on an unrelated matter. I want to conclude the book by briefly looking at the possibility of a similarly divided opinion of the law at more ordinary levels of society and in the heat of actual legal business.
The text I use to raise these questions for the sake of argument is a fairly simple contract, somewhat remarkably preserved, from the Netherlands ([25]). The underlying transaction is clear enough; one Stellus Reperius Boesus has sold a cow for cash to another man named Gargilius Secundus in front of witnesses. The striking thing for present purposes is the final formula before the date at the end. “Let this agreement be free from civil law (ius civile).”
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- Information
- Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans , pp. 229 - 234Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010