Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Religious Law

of sacrificial animals, and occasionally reacting to random prodigies like the birth of a two-headed animal or a rain of stones. This communication was rarely aimed at prophecy in the sense of discovering the future. Rather, the goal was to dis cover divine judgment of a past or present action. Most of the time what was sought was a simple yes-or-no answer: did the gods approve of some government action? As with the notion of “sacred” property just discussed, this general idea took on somewhat different forms in different contexts, some of which are more relevant to the law than others. Before holding an election or having the assembly vote on legislation, a magistrate had, at a minimum, to check for cer tain signs in the sky. Normally, this was done by the magis trate who would preside over the meeting, but in principle all the senior magistrates were competent to take notice of such omens. In addition to the supervising magistrates, who acted as the authorized representatives of the Roman people before the gods, there were standing bodies of priests who were supposed to be expert in the particular forms of omens. “Augurs” knew the sky signs, for instance, and “haruspices” were specialists in entrails. Moreover, signs of all sorts might be forwarded to the Senate for action, and the Senate might farm them back out to one or the other of the priestly bodies for study before taking action. The lack of clear rules meant that the interac tion between religion and human law and legislation was not always predictable. Two examples may help to illustrate this. While consul in 59, Julius Caesar often butted heads with the other consul, Bibulus. He even resorted to inciting mob

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