Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Legal Education

in the later empire (at least in the eastern part). A law degree was required to practice before the higher courts, and this was in turn a qualification for positions in government. Still, this elaborate system may represent only a very par tial picture. Though much larger than the Republican and early Imperial governments, the Late Antique state apparatus was still tiny compared to modern governments. It could have absorbed only so many men with legal training. They must have been vastly outnumbered by lesser legal professionals who worked as private counsel throughout the empire. Conversely, it seems unlikely that the great schools could have produced all of these. I have already mentioned the existence, only barely attested, of lower-tier law schools in the provinces, and there must have been many more of these that have left no trace, even in Italy. It is also possible that many may have learned as apprentices, not on the model of the old elite acculturation of future aris tocrats, but more like tradesmen. The same could well be true of our two earlier periods as well. There was apparently sig nificant civil litigation among the merely well-to-do of Cicero’s age. They must have had access to some kind of legal advisors. We have little direct evidence of individual cases, but this was presumably the function of the “lesser” juristic types such as tabelliones , formularii , and causidici (see Chapter 5). We have better individual attestation of rhetorically trained advocates at this social level.) Similarly, the great schools of the early Empire could not have served the needs of a rapidly growing citizen population throughout Roman territory. Again, some combi nation of lesser schools and apprenticeship must be imagined.

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