Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Writing and the Law

That main usage is, not surprisingly, for the making of wills (Chapter 16). In theory, these could have been composed orally (like a stipulatio ), but not only would this create serious eviden tiary problems, it would remove the possibility of confidential wills, which Romans seem to have found desirable. There was also a form of contract (called litteris , “by letters”) that was entered into by creating certain entries in account books under appropriate circumstances. The details are obscure, but such contracts seem to have been fairly rare. These two devices are Republican, but other legal uses of writing developed over the course of the Empire. Augustan legislation allowed for regis tration of births and wills. The emperor Constantine required a number of private transactions (e.g., sale of land) to be reg istered to guarantee their effect. And even more directly, he required that gifts be effected by written documents. (These requirements were rolled back by later emperors.)

Documents in Legal Proceedings

These extreme cases, in which writing was either required or unacceptable, however, are relatively few. Much of what went on in Roman law could proceed either with or without written documents. For instance, the “consensual” contracts (Chapter 12) could be written down or not, as could notice of intent to sue. This means that the line between “legal doc uments” in the narrow sense and documents that just hap pened to be used in court was somewhat fuzzy. To see why,

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