Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Documents

share (= 11/120) 28 April 35. [Names of witnesses who applied their seals to the document follow.]

Roman wills focused not on distribution of individual items • but rather on passing on the estate (assets and liabilities alike) as a whole. Thus, if there are to be multiple benefi ciaries, they often get small, elaborately calculated fractions like these. A separate document suggests that the will may have been partially overturned in favor of the patron of Isochrysus (such partial action was possible only in very limited circumstances). The object of the suit documented here seems to have been to recover Isochrysus’s debts from his heirs. This hearing was held before a local elected official ( • in iure ), serving much the same role at Pompeii as the praetor in Rome, rather than before a judge ( apud iudicem ). This kind of hearing served to establish the basic outlines of the case, but there would not be a formal airing of the evidence, con frontation, or judgment until the hearing before the judge.

[4] TPSulp 43

Titus Vestorius Arpocra the younger asked for a promise that … [the slave] was not a fugitive and wanderer and that the other things required in this year’s edict of the curule aediles had been correctly provided for and that the conventional dou ble-price-back guarantee was in place. Titus Vestorius Phoenix made the promise. Done at Puteoli 21 August 38. [Witnesses.]

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