Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

instructional works in the first year and more professional works later. Most of these texts were centuries-old “classics,” though legal writings were often subject to ongoing modifica tion (“interpolation”) to keep them current. There is even evi dence that standard editions of the texts were produced for use in the schools, a practice otherwise nearly unheard of in the ancient book trade. For the first three years there were public lectures, though all five years presumably included slightly less formal instruction. While we do not know much about the chronology of the bureaucratization of the law schools or their spread into the provinces, we can say a little about the forces likely to have brought them about. First, while never static, the state of the law had stabilized. The most important source of law, the Praetor’s Edict, had finally been fixed in the first half of the sec ond century. Once citizenship was granted to all free persons in the empire in ad 212, the whole Roman world was, at least in theory, subject to a single legal regime. Roman law had always been primarily about Roman citizens (see Chapter 21); now that meant everybody. The age of productive jurisprudence came to an end in the first half of the third century (note that this is the end date of most of the textbooks mentioned above). If the law was less of a “moving target,” it was easier to make instruc tion more systematic. Late imperial culture as a whole is also described as increasingly bureaucratic, both in the growth of the state apparatus and in attempts by the state to impose its order on the rest of society. This is particularly relevant to the law schools because they came to serve a credentialing function

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