Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Legal (In)equality

fees for lawyers were, at different times, restricted or outlawed altogether. But in either case, the rules seem to have been evaded or simply ignored. Attested fees range from the stratospheric to the (for ordinary people) merely high, though it is not clear that the lowest available fees are represented in our sources. Still, even if many or most people could have afforded some advocate when necessary, the wealthier party to any given case would clearly have much more to choose from. (Lawyers could not sue to recover even legitimate fees; this may have increased the rel evance of personal ties.) We know less about the cost of juristic advice, but we may imagine that this worked in roughly the same way as advocacy. Connections and/or money would give advantage. The costs of outside assistance were in principle optional, or at least negotiable, but some costs were unavoidable. Travel (often to Rome), lodging, and lost income would have been very burdensome for most. The legal process itself, more over, entailed certain costs and investments. As we will see in Chapter 12, civil procedure relied heavily on giving security. There was little state apparatus to bring someone to court or enforce judgment, so an elaborate system of bail was put in place. (The importance of this is illustrated by the sheer fre quency of examples in the documentary evidence [1, 2] .) For this purpose, one would have to promise sums of money (often tied to the value of the suit) for nonappearance, or, more com monly, offer a person who would personally commit to paying in your absence. Both would be much easier for the wealthy, who had both the resources and wealthy friends. Moreover,

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