Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Legal Education

some unknown instructors existed. The noble men who served as heads of the schools would then have held largely honor ific positions, and would have interacted with students (when they did so at all) in a manner that mimicked the Republican tirocinium fori . Still, the existence of formal schools would presumably have expanded the availability of legal education. Admittance to study would presumably have required money, both indirectly (in the form of good primary and secondary instruction) and directly (since the teachers were not generally state-sponsored). Still, the schools could create the set of con nections with the legal establishment that the earlier Republican system wanted as a prerequisite instead. This situation seems to hold until at least the mid second century, and probably until much later than that. Our next clear look at legal instruction comes from imperial decrees of the fifth and sixth centuries. This is after the period covered in most of this book, but it may show us conditions that had come into being somewhat earlier. At any rate, we now find several distinctive features. There are major schools in Rome, Beirut (this one going back at least to 239), and Constantinople (modern Istanbul in Turkey, and then the capital of the eastern half of the empire), as well as less important ones elsewhere around the empire. The major schools were headed by state sponsored professors, though the bulk of instruction was still in the hands of “private” lecturers attached to the schools. Most notably, a fixed curriculum was established by law (though its content may have been traditional for some time before then). For each of five years, there were specified readings: synthetic

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