Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

law in matters where its rules are clearer. So, for instance, the newly bought house of Titus Calpurnius Lanarius was destroyed around 100 bc on order of the augurs. It turned out that the structure blocked a sight line needed for taking certain auspices. Apparently, Calpurnius did not resist the ruling, but just had the house demolished. (He could and did, however, sue the seller for not revealing the hidden defect; see Chapter 12 on bonae fidei contracts.) The jurists conceded that it was the priests, not themselves, who could judge whether renovation of a tomb had shaded over into desecration or whether bodies once buried could be removed for reburial elsewhere (see [27] ). And priests apparently had to approve adoptions (see Chapter 17) of persons who were in their own power. Apparently, this is because of the religious implications of the act itself. An inde pendent person was the head of a family that presumably had family religious rites. The adoption would extinguish the fam ily, and that would end the performance of the rites. Hence the need for priestly approval. The issue is complicated by the fact that most of the power to make religious decisions was in the same (small) set of hands that also held political power. The Senate made decisions on a number of religious issues, and this may even have been a rare area in which they had direct (rather than advisory) authority. The priesthoods were nearly all held by members of the sena torial class, and most of these were actual holders of political office. When an individual who is both a politician and a reli gious official makes a decision in a case with both political and religious implications, it is impossible (on our evidence) to tell

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