OUP (2016) h/b 728pp £110 (ISBN 978019878689)
This handbook brings together the product of much recent research into Roman law and related fields. It comprises fifty chapters, built around the following themes: sources of law, the surviving material, the Roman constitution, the legal profession and its culture, civil litigation, criminal law and procedure, status, gender and legal relations. The issues it covers include (among much else) contract, crime, status, gender issues, slavery, family law, business disputes and property law. Further, it takes full advantage of the increasing quantity of material available to scholars. Several hundred new papyri, many recording or providing evidence of legal transactions, appear every year. Some papyri relate to civil litigation, even including case management decisions. For example, an interstitium made by a magistrate may order that the trial takes place in two days’ time before a named judge. This is exactly the sort of case management order that a Master might make nowadays at a pre-trial review.
A handbook on this scale does not lend itself to pithy summary within the permitted word limit. Suffice it to say that the volume is a treasure trove for anyone with a serious interest in Roman history or Roman law. What follows is a selection of the topics which particularly caught the interest of this reviewer.
Two separate chapters provide an account of Diocletian’s price edict of AD 301: chapter 4 deals with epigraphy, and details this rare example of an Imperial constitution transcribed as an inscription; while chapter 46 outlines the economic context and explains why the price edict was a total failure, indeed counterproductive. It led to the collapse of markets and scarcity of goods. The edict was rescinded in AD 305.
The group of chapters on constitutional structure has a particular resonance for the modern reader. Rome did not have a written constitution. The drawback of this arrangement was a continuing doubt about precisely what powers each institution of the state possessed. On the other hand, as the authors demonstrate, being unwritten the constitution was more dynamic and flexible. Magistracies evolved to meet changing political circumstances. The functions of praetors multiplied as Rome acquired provinces and needed officials to administer them. The fiction of pro-praetors and pro-consuls generated more and more governors, as the empire progressively expanded. The role of the senate changed, when the principate replaced the republic. Generally speaking, senators deferred to the will of the emperor.
The chapters on civil procedure will also resonate with the modern reader. The Romans used both arbitration and mediation (in modern parlance ‘Alternative Dispute Resolution’), as well as formal litigation. Under the republic there were two stages in such litigation, first before a magistrate and then before a judge (iudex). Formulae played a crucial role in the civil process. Under the principate and the dominate, a new process emerged, the cognitio. This involved a single stage, and all proceedings were before the same official or judge. The formulary process gradually faded out. In late antiquity there was a hierarchy of courts and a structured legal profession, with a right to receive fees. There was even a costs-shifting regime under which the court could order the loser to pay the winner’s costs.
As with all Oxford handbooks, this work is not intended for the beginner. The reader is assumed to have a basic knowledge of Roman history and ideally a smattering of law as well. For any lawyer with an interest in the classics the book will provide many hours of pleasure. It is, however, a volume for dipping into, not for reading from cover to cover. This reviewer will frequently be dipping into it, since Roman law has a relevance even in modern litigation (see e.g. King v Chiltern Dog Rescue [2015] EWCA Civ 581, a claim for donatio mortis causa decided in part by reference to Justinian’s Institutes).
Rupert Jackson