Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

that jurists and advocates were similar enough that the same offenses would get you banned from both jobs, but different enough that a rule had to be made to state the point explicitly.

Other Terminology

Most of the discussion to this point has described the situation at the top (socially speaking) of both professions. There is some evidence, however, that there were other types of legal practi tioners, some defined primarily in functional terms, others in social. On the one hand, surviving records of particular cases (almost entirely from Egypt) show us the intervention of advo cates at much lower social levels than we have been talking about. On the other hand, we also have occasional references to terminology for different professionals who might carry out that kind of work. For instance, there are the so-called prag matici or “men of affairs.” The word is Greek in origin, and the majority of instances refer to Greek contexts, but they seem to have existed in the Roman world as well. Pragmatici appear to have been legal experts in the employ of speakers. They dif fer from jurists in (perhaps) not publishing, in working for a wage, and (we may suspect from the last) in being of lower social standing. The so-called causidici perhaps stood in the same relationship to elite advocates as pragmatici did to elite jurists. The term means simply “pleaders of cases.” Causidici are associated with members of other socially suspect profes sions, such as heralds and auctioneers, and with nonprofessional

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