Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

9. Writing and the Law EEE

A ncient rome, whether represented today in popular movies or in scholarly books, often looks like a world full of writing. Written texts can outlive their mortal writers, and the effect is multiplied when multiple copies are made of one author’s work. And clearly the Romans had a fascination with some forms of writing, such as inscriptions on stone. Yet most scholars agree that the average Roman was poorly or not at all literate. In such a world, it is perhaps not surprising that writ ing had an important but limited role in the law. The simplest illustration of this is provided by the Edict. The very name of this core set of rules points to the world of speech; the word literally means an order “spoken out” by the magistrate. At the same time, a citizen actually encountering the Edict would almost certainly have come across it in the form of an “album” – a wooden board whitewashed and written on with black ink. To examine the whole of the relationship between writing and the law, however, we will need to consider several different variables. What differences were there between the treatment of the laws proper and that of individual legal instruments (e.g., contracts)? Were all forms or media of writing equivalent?

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