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Article

Antiochus (13) Chuzon  

Tony Honoré

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
Antiochus (13) Chuzon, chief architect of the *Theodosian Code of ce 438, was a lawyer from Antioch (1). He was quaestor to *Theodosius (3) II from March 427 to April 430, praetorian prefect in 430–1, and consul in 431. A member of the commission set up to prepare the Code in 429, he presided over its second phase from 435 to 438 and was praised when it was promulgated as ‘distinguished in all things’ (cuncta sublimis: Nov.

Article

Antistius Labeo, Marcus  

Tony Honoré

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
Antistius Labeo, Marcus, whose family came from *Samnium, was a leading Roman lawyer of the age of *Augustus and died between ce 10 and 22. His father Pacuvius, also a lawyer, was killed fighting for the republican cause. As a member of a commission to reconstitute the senate in 18 bce he showed his independent spirit. Out of sympathy with the new order, his political career stopped at the praetorship: the consulship belatedly offered him by Augustus he refused. Sextus *Pomponius (Dig. 1. 2. 2. 47) and Tacitus (Ann. 3. 75) contrast his attachment to republican principle with the obsequiousness of his contemporary C. *Ateius Capito (2). Taught by his father, C. *Trebatius Testa and others, he acquired expertise not only in law but in dialectics, language, literature, and grammar, which he brought to bear on legal problems. Author of many innovations, he divided his time equally between teaching in Rome and writing in the country, and composed in all some 400 books. He drew a line, as it were, under republican jurisprudence, which was henceforth cited largely through him. He was also, after *Aquillius Gallus, the first important figure to devote himself to legal science to the exclusion of political concerns.

Article

apparitores  

Nicholas Purcell

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
Apparitores, salaried officials who attended Roman magistrates and priests, attested from the 4th cent. bce to the 3rd cent. ce. They constituted one of the few resources of executive agency and administrative expertise available to magistrates, and gained power which they not infrequently abused. Appointed by the patronage of the magistrates, they served for more than their patron's year of office (except in the case of the accensi, who were personal assistants of consuls in office). These officials held the highest public appointment open to non-senators under the republican system, and constituted a status-category (ordo), entry to which provided a reflection of social promotion for *freedmen and people from outside Rome; during the empire the social standing of the grander apparitores was little lower than the equestrian order (see equites). Their standing was reflected in a complex organization into corporations (called decuriae) according to function, which seems to have been reordered in the early empire, when new grades serving the emperor as magistrate were created. The *scribae (broadly ‘clerks’, though serving also as accountants and cashiers) were the highest in prestige (Horace was at least briefly scriba to the quaestors who ran the treasury, see aerarium), followed by the *lictores who carried the insignia of imperium, the *fasces, and acted as a bodyguard, the *viatores or general errand-runners, and the praecones or announcers.

Article

Arcadius Charisius, Aurelius  

Tony Honoré

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
Aurelius Arcadius Charisius, a Roman lawyer and *magister libellorum (master of petitions) of the age of *Diocletian, was assigned by some earlier scholars to the time of *Constantine or later, partly because of his ornate rhetorical style; but closer study, confirming the views of other scholars, shows that the imperial rescripts (replies to petitions) of mid-290 to 291 ce closely resemble the texts from his monographs in style and outlook, so that he is likely to have been Diocletian's magister libellorum in those years. Apart from more than a hundred rescripts, his work has survived in the form of six passages taken by Justinian's compilers (see justinian's codification) from his monographs, the last of this genre. Each of them breaks new ground: on witnesses (De testibus), public duties (De muneribus civilibus), and the office of praetorian prefect (De officio praefecti praetorio).

Article

Ateius Capito (2), Gaius, Roman consul, 5 CE  

Thomas Little Heath

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law

Ateius Capito (2), Gaius, a lawyer of modest senatorial family, was a follower of Ofilius, became consul in 5 ce and was supervisor of the water supply (curator aquarum, see cura(tio)) from 14 to 22 ce, when he died. A writer on public law, sacred and constitutional, he supported Augustus but from a conservative standpoint. Sex. *Pomponius and *Tacitus (Ann. 3. 75) attest his standing as a lawyer, but contrast him as a legal conservative with *Antistius Labeo, who was a republican politically but an innovator in legal matters. Pomponius regards Capito as the originator of the Cassian or Sabinian school (secta) of lawyers (see c. cassius longinus (2); masurius sabinus). His work has not survived and he is only once cited by another lawyer, perhaps because he took the Augustan ‘restoration’ too seriously.

Article

betrothal, Roman sponsalia  

Gordon Willis Williams and Antony Spawforth

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Gender Studies
  2. Roman Law

In the republic consisted of reciprocal sponsiones, and breach-of-promise actions (in the form of actions for damages) existed. The movement of classical Roman law was in the direction of removing constraint, and the term sponsalia came near to an informal agreement to marry, voidable at will (except that the intending husband was required to return such dowry as had been given to him and the intending bride was expected to return the much more usual gift from her intending husband, the donatio ante nuptias, for gifts after marriage were excluded). The betrothal was solemnized with a kiss and the intending husband put an iron *ring (anulus pronubus) on the third finger of his partner's left hand; it was the occasion for a party (also called sponsalia).

See also marriage law, Greek and Roman.

Article

brigandage  

Antony Spawforth

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
Brigandage (Gk. lesteia, Lat. latrocinium), the unlawful use of personal violence to maraud by land, was not condemned wholesale by the Classical Greeks. A carry-over from pre-state times, it remained a respectable occupation among some communities (Thuc. 1. 5). In the 3rd cent. bce central Greece was dominated by the *Aetolians, whose confederacy protected, indeed quasi-institutionalized, their traditional way of life as bandits and pirates. As with Aetolia, brigandage was particularly prevalent in geographically more marginal zones, especially uplands, over which even the ancient empires exercised only nominal control (in the heart of the Persian empire note the Uxii, Arr. Anab. 3. 17. 1; *Isauria is the classic Roman case), and where pastoral mobility (see nomads; transhumance) facilitated illegal behaviour. With the Roman state's claim to the monopoly of force, latrocinium acquired a wider semantic range than modern ‘brigandage’ (it included e.g. ‘feuding’ and ‘raiding’). The urban populations saw brigandage as such as an all-pervasive threat beyond the city gates (this was true even in Italy at the height of empire). In its attempts to control bandits (never permanently successful, not least because they often had the support of élite landowners), the Roman state relied on the army, including the occasional all-out campaign (as by Augustus in the Alps: Strabo 4. 6. 6), more usually on the uncoordinated efforts of local police and vigilantes (western cities had their viatores, ‘road patrols’, eastern ones their diogmitai commanded by irenarchs, lit.

Article

Callistratus (4), Roman lawyer, late 2nd cent. CE  

Tony Honoré

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law

A provincial Roman lawyer of the reign of *Septimius Severus (193–211 ce) whose name points to a Greek background. Besides dealing with the provincial governor's edict (Edictum monitorium), he innovated by writing on tax law (De iure fisci et populi) and magisterial jurisdiction (De cognitionibus). His perspective is provincial, the sources cited being predominantly laws of the emperor and senate, seldom the opinions of lawyers, and the subject-matter criminal law and procedure, exemption from public duties, and related matters with a public aspect. Other legal writers do not cite him, but Justinian's compilers (see justinian's codification) took 100 rather cumbrous passages from his works.

Article

candidatus  

Piero Treves, Eastland Stuart Staveley, and Andrew Lintott

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
A candidate for a Roman magistracy. Officially named petitor (his rivals were therefore styled competitores), he was called candidatus because he wore a whitened toga when greeting electors in the forum. A slave (nomenclator) reminded him of the names of the electors, and he had a crowd of partisans (sectatores) from the plebs including his own freedmen and other clients, whose numbers were taken as an index of his likely success (these numbers were limited by a lex Fabia of 64 bce). In the late republic these activities frequently began a full year before the election, but the traditional period of canvass was over the last three market-days (nundinae); this brought the candidate's name to the notice of the presiding magistrate. Originally candidacies, even of those absent, might be accepted on election day, but such concessions were limited by laws of the late republic. Under the Principate names might be given to the presiding consul or to the emperor who would pass the names on, if he had no objection (nominatio).

Article

Cassius Longinus (2), Gaius, Roman lawyer, mid-1st cent. CE  

Tony Honoré

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law

Gaius Cassius Longinus (2), a great-grandson (or nephew) of the tyrannicide *Cassius of the same name, and descended on his mother's side from Servius *Sulpicius Rufus, was a senator of rigorously conservative views (Tac. Ann. 14. 42 f.) and the leading Roman lawyer under Claudius and *Nero. After a career as praetor, suffect consul, and governor of Asia (Minor) and Syria he was, despite blindness, exiled to Sardinia after the discovery of C. *Calpurnius Piso (2)'s conspiracy in 65, but *Vespasian recalled him. A pupil of *Masurius Sabinus, his senior in age and superior in intellect but inferior in social status, he founded the Cassian school (schola Cassiana, a century later called the Sabinians), a group of lawyers who insisted on a traditional and pragmatic view of the law. His views are cited by other lawyers but none of his writing survives.

Article

censor  

Peter Sidney Derow

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
The title of one of a pair of senior Roman magistrates, elected by the centuriate assembly (see centuria) to hold office for eighteen months. Although they lacked *imperium and the right to an escort of lictors (*lictores), the censors possessed considerable authority and influence owing to the range of their responsibilities. The censorship was established in 443 bce as a civil magistracy with the primary function of making up and maintaining the official list of Roman citizens (census), previously the task of the consuls (see census). The censors were initially exclusively patrician. One of the leges Publiliae of 339 required that at least one of the censors be a plebeian (see publilius philo, q.), but not until 131 bce were both censors plebeian. The office came to be regarded as the highest position in the *cursus honorum and to be held as a rule only by ex-consuls.

Article

census  

Peter Sidney Derow

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
A national register prepared at Rome, on the basis of which were determined voting rights and liability for military service and taxation. The census was held first by the king, then by the *consuls, and from 443 bce by the *censors. One was normally held every four (later five) years. Individuals were required to state their full name, age, name of their father or patronus, domicile, occupation, and the amount of their property (Livy 40. 51. 9; tabula Heracleensis 145). The names of women and children were not included in the census, but parents gave details about families (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4. 15). On the basis of the information received the censors registered citizens in tribes, *tribus (by domicile, except in the case of *freedmen who were, for most of the republic, registered in one or more of the four urban tribes), and centuries (see centuria) (by property and age, as most of the centuries were divided amongst five classes, each with a property qualification and each containing centuries of iuniores and seniores).

Article

centumviri  

Barry Nicholas

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 July 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
Centumviri, (lit. 100 men), a special civil court at Rome, or, strictly, the panel from which a court (consilium) was chosen. The panel numbered in fact in the later republic 105 men (three taken from each *tribus) and in the empire 180. The number forming a consilium is not known, but in the empire there were usually four consilia, though the full court of 180 might sit for a particular case (Plin., Ep. 4. 24, 6. 33). From the time of Augustus the presidents of the consilia were drawn from the *decemviri stlitibus iudicandis, and before then from among the ex-quaestors. The centumviri took only the second stage of the proceedings, in place of the more usual single *iudex. The first stage, before the praetor urbanus or peregrinus (Gai. Inst. 4. 31; see praetor) was by legis actio sacramento (see sacramentum), even after legis actiones had otherwise been abolished.

Article

Cervidius Scaevola, Quintus  

Tony Honoré

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
Quintus Cervidius Scaevola, a leading Roman lawyer of the later 2nd cent. ce, probably came from *Carthage and, through his wife, had a close connection with Nemausus (Nîmes). Perhaps a pupil of Sextus *Pomponius, he rose to be praefectus vigilum (chief of police) in Rome in 175–7. He was the chief legal adviser of *Marcus Aurelius, had a large consultative practice, with many clients from the eastern empire, and taught some eminent pupils, including *Paulus and Tryphoninus. He annotated the Digesta of *Marcellus and *Iulianus, published 20 books (libri) of Variae quaestiones (‘Varied Problems’), and, most notably, is credited with 6 books of Responsa (‘Opinions’) and 40 of Digesta (‘Ordered Abstracts’). These both purport to record Scaevola's views in reply to consultants but in the Responsa the opinions, stringently edited, are much shorter. The overlap between these collections has led to some sceptical views of their genuineness, but the likelihood is that the Responsa were published by Scaevola himself and later annotated by Paulus and Tryphoninus, whereas the Digesta were published (perhaps by Tryphoninus, who annotated them) after the author's death.

Article

children in Roman law  

Ville Vuolanto

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
26 February 2018
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
In the Roman world, the age limits connected to children were often flexible. Even in the case of legal liability, the ages were not rigid. In individual cases, children’s capacity to understand right and wrong, criminality, and responsibility were to be taken into account—at least in theory.1 Generally, children until the age of seven were referred to as infantes, until puberty (or, in later legislation, until the age of twelve for girls and fourteen for boys) as impuberes, and those between the puberty and the age of twenty-five (with the full legal capacity) more generally as (minores).Even if children and, more broadly, minores feature in the Roman law already from the Twelve Tables onwards, they did not constitute a category of their own in Roman legislative thinking. Thus, information on children in Roman law is scattered throughout the whole corpus of legal literature.A child is here defined as an individual below the age of full legal capacity, not primarily as a blood relationship to one’s parents. The focus here is on matters pertaining to the rights and status of the children themselves as underaged persons. The main themes are children’s legal incapacity in economic matters, guardianship, paternal and parental power over the person of the child (patria potestas and personal status; exposure, killing and selling of children) and the obligations between parents and children.

Article

citizenship, Roman  

Michael Crawford

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
In both the Greek and the Roman world in the Archaic period, it seems that communities were open to the arrival of people from elsewhere, at all social levels, whether one thinks of Hesiod's father, *Demaratus (1) of Corinth in Tarquinii, the Tarquins (see tarquinius priscus; Tarquinius Superbus), or Attus Clusus and his followers in Rome. Detailed rules for citizenship were of course developed in both civilizations, as the city evolved, in the 7th to 5th or 6th to 5th cents. bce. In the case of Rome, though the details are obscure, Roman citizenship clearly developed in dialogue with the citizenships of other Latin communities. It involved the observance of the Roman civil law; and the struggles of the plebeians gradually brought protection for citizens from magisterial *imperium.At all events, Roman citizenship came to possess two features which distinguished it from polis citizenship and which later surprised Greek observers: the automatic incorporation of freed slaves of Romans into the Roman citizen body; and the ease with which whole communities of outsiders could be admitted as citizens. By the time Rome faced the invasion of *Hannibal in 218 bce, she had a long history of giving citizenship to Italian communities, either with the vote (optimo iure) or without the vote (sine suffragio).

Article

civitas  

Nicholas Purcell

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
Civitas, ‘citizenship, citizen community’ (for the first, see citizenship, roman), term of Roman administrative law referring, like Greek *polis, to any free-standing community, and specifically, in the imperial period, to the lowest grade of autonomous member-community of the cellular provincial empire. In areas of the empire newly under Roman rule (as frequently in Gaul, Britain, Spain, and Africa in the early empire) such a civitas formed from a local ethnic or social unit, had a citizenry, council and magistrates, and a set of procedural rules adaptable to local custom. In many cases there was also encouragement to form a city to provide a physical setting for the new institutions. The next step might be the grant of full municipal status (see municipium). Meanwhile, the civitas could be relied on to carry out the *census and collect taxes, and its officials became the connection with representatives of the Roman res publica such as governors or procurators.

Article

classis  

Tim Cornell

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
A classis (‘class’) was a group of Roman citizens who could meet a certain minimum wealth qualification. Servius *Tullius is supposed to have divided property owners into five classes for military purposes. The first three classes were equipped as heavy infantry, the last two as light-armed skirmishers (Livy 1. 43; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4. 16; Cic. Rep. 2. 22). This system, together with the monetary values given in our sources to the levels of wealth required for membership of the various classes, belongs to the middle republic, and cannot be earlier than c.400 bce. But certain texts (Festus, entry under ‘infra classem’; Gell. NA 6. 13) mention a simpler division between a single classis and the rest, who were defined as infra classem (‘beneath the class’). It has been suggested that the institution of a classis of heavy infantry could go back to the 6th cent., when according to archaeological evidence ‘*hoplite’ tactics and equipment were in use in central Italy, and that the tradition concerning Servius Tullius is to this extent based on fact.

Article

cliens  

Arnaldo Momigliano and Tim Cornell

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman History and Historiography
  2. Roman Law
In Rome a client was a free man who entrusted himself to another and received protection in return. Clientship was a hereditary social status consecrated by usage and recognized, though not defined or enforced, by the law. The rules of the law were however far more binding in the special case of the freedman, who was ipso facto a client of his former owner (see freedmen). Ordinary clients supported their patron (*patronus) in political and private life, and demonstrated their loyalty and respect by going to his house to greet him each morning (see salutatio), and attending him when he went out. The size of a man's clientele, and the wealth and status of his individual clients, were a visible testimony to his prestige and social standing (and therefore to his political influence). In exchange clients received favours and benefits of various kinds, including daily subsistence in the form of food or money (such a payment was known as a sportula) and assistance in the courts.

Article

client kings  

Julia Wilker

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman History and Historiography
  2. Roman Law
“Client kings” is the modern English term commonly used to describe monarchs who were bound to Rome in an asymmetrical relationship and/or unequal alliance and whose rule depended on Rome’s continued approval. Client rulers enjoyed relative freedom in internal affairs but were strictly limited in all matters of foreign policy. Client kingdoms and principalities were often situated on the periphery of the Roman empire. Most dependent rulers originated from their own realms and in many cases based their legitimacy on traditional dynastic claims. Roman interference increased in the 1st century bce; from the time of Augustus on, client kingdoms were conceptually considered parts of the empire. Borders were redrawn more frequently, and rulers were appointed, reassigned, and deposed more according to imperial interests than local custom. In turn, client kings and their dynasties increasingly became part of the emerging imperial elite. Despite a significant decline in their numbers towards the end of the 1st century ce, client kingship as an instrument of Roman hegemonic control did not cease to exist until late antiquity.