Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

second problem has to do with the sources initially available. Ancient governments did not necessarily make arrangements for wide publication of their laws in the way that modern ones do, nor were there private institutions to publish, circulate, or even centralize legal documents. For instance, a famous let ter exchange between a provincial governor and the emperor in the early second century ad indicates that neither had an archive of previous imperial decisions affecting the province. Many documents were published in a few copies on lasting media, and there were a few central archives. However, neither the original completeness of those collections, nor their preser vation, nor their retrieval systems were remotely up to modern standards. Essentially the same problem exists for the writings of the jurists. Moreover, there is a special problem related to legal texts not encountered in most other kinds of historical evi dence. Romans, of course, were generally interested in legal writings not because they were part of “history,” but because they were “law.” Their interests were practical, not academic. Not only did they usually omit information that was “merely” historical, but legal texts were sometimes actually rewritten (usually without warning) to accommodate changes in the law. (This rewriting is called “interpolation.”) Contrast, say, the way we keep track of the American Constitution. Looking at the text, we can see that slavery was originally recognized in the United States but was eventually abolished (by the Thirteenth Amendment). This kind of historical perspective is often lost in Roman texts.

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