Michigan (2016) p/b 506pp £41.50 (ISBN 9780472036615)
This book lists and categorises (in 45 tables) the laws (leges and plebiscita) reported as passed by the Roman people in the period 350 to 44 BC. It takes Roman law-making as a historical peculiarity, notes a correlation between numbers of laws and periods of crisis, and claims that laws represented the communal will of the Roman people (Part 1, chs.1-3). It argues that Roman law-making was crucial to Roman domestic consensus and the Roman unification of Italy (Part 2, chs.4-6). Then, after the Social War, the vast numbers of new citizens swamped the legislative system which was also undermined by dictatorial leaders (Part 3, chs.6-9).
This is the paperback of the hardback edition of 2005 which has attracted responses ranging from brilliant to awful. This stems from the hybrid nature of the book. First, although rooted in the author’s academic research, it was written in a non-academic life-phase. In the good parts, such as chapters 2 and 3, on debate and group voting in Roman law-making, this makes it lively and readable. Parts 2 and 3, however, are narrative rather than argument, and rather tedious going (with the sparse notes inexcusably printed as endnotes). Second is the awkward idea of presenting a sociological thesis about the nature of Roman law-making through an outline narrative of the whole Republic with reference to some of the laws passed rather than detailed thematic discussion of the key issues.
Criticism of the scholarship is not unjustified. The list of laws is derivative and largely unchecked, and their content is not always accurately represented. Part 1 rather skates over the questions of survival, representativeness, and indeed whether law-making was rather different before plebiscita were made equivalent to leges (287 BC). It is hard to accept the repeated assertion in Part 2 that the Roman laws which affected Italy bonded the Italic peoples to Rome when their main purpose was to subject and control them (and the focus on pastoralism is odd and error-ridden). The Part 3 narrative of the ‘Fall of the Republic’ is really the old story with the old causes parcelled up and labelled law-making.
But, despite these real problems, the fundamental questions are novel and interesting: what was the (developing) role of law-making at Rome? How peculiar was it? Athens passed many popular laws too, and Polybius gives little detail and no comment on Roman assemblies or law-making. How far did it promote consensus? And was that by stimulating or smothering the popular voice? As some clamour for a second referendum on Brexit, these are issues with topical resonance.
Dominic Rathbone