The Sources of Law in Rome

Roman legal texts open a view onto the life and society of the empire at its height, its management, its peoples, their activities, interrelations, and problems, and their experiences when facing the juristic power of the state and its officials. Now, the first step in the study of these texts is the identification of the sources of the law. Sources are defined first as the mechanisms by which the law was introduced and regarded as authoritative by the Romans, and second the legal works transmitted to us by writers and compilers in the ancient world, which have been translated and analysed by modern scholars. This introduction offers a brief overview of these topics and some of the issues associated with the use of legal texts in the study of Roman social, economic, and political history. For helpful discussions see Crook (1994b), Robinson (Reference Robinson1997), especially 1–78; Johnston (Reference Johnston1999), 2–29; law after ad 235 Ibbetson (Reference Ibbetson, Bowman and Cameron2005); Matthews (Reference Matthews and Potter2006); Riggsby (Reference Riggsby2010).

The earliest statement of Roman legal procedure was the Twelve Tables, dating to c. 450 bc, a collection of rules of customary law, which became obsolete but were never formally abrogated. In the third century ad the distinguished jurist Papinian summed up the basis of the law’s authority as follows: ‘The civil law is what issues from laws, plebiscites, decrees of the senate, imperial decisions, and the authority of jurists’ (D 1.1.7). In the republic, the assembly of the plebs (concilium plebis) was the principal source of law, in that it accepted or rejected the formal proposals put to it by the appropriate magistrates. We know of more than 900 statutes or proposals for statutes, which indicate the developing interests and sophistication of government as the republic expanded its horizons. This legislation mainly relates to public activities and the interests of the state and the people (ius publicum).

The senate as the most prestigious assembly in Rome expected to be consulted by magistrates, most importantly the consuls, before any initiatives were taken or proposals for statutes put before the people. The senate then offered its advice in the form of a decree (senatus consultum). Therefore, throughout the republic, despite its enormous influence, the senate did not itself make law. However, early in the imperial period the senatus consultum came to have the force of law, as the vote of the people’s assembly was increasingly merely a formality (see Talbert (Reference Talbert1984), 431–59). This suited the emperor because his influence could be more direct in a shorter path to legislation. Eventually, the senatorial decree also declined in importance, and the basis for new law became the emperor’s speech to the senators (oratio principis) proposing a measure (Ibbetson (Reference Ibbetson, Bowman and Cameron2005), 193).

Magistrates, particularly the praetors, were an important source of civil or private law (ius civile). They were mainly responsible for responding to plaintiffs in civil jurisdiction, the praetor urbanus dealing with suits between citizens, and the praetor peregrinus with suits between citizens and non-citizens. The praetor had to decide if there was a case to answer, and if so, what statute or procedure was appropriate. In a sense therefore the praetor could interpret and develop the law, and on entering office issued an edict setting out how he intended to conduct his legal duties, the nature of suits he would receive, and legal defences. He could offer remedies for situations not currently protected under the civil law; he could even grant a legal fiction to permit a suit to be brought where previously no legal process was possible. The praetor’s intentions were expressed in the first person, for example, ‘I shall grant an action …’. This could serve to modify or reform the civil law without repealing it; the importance of the praetor’s role should be set against the relatively limited number of statutes dealing with private law (Matthews (Reference Matthews and Potter2006), 485–6).

The praetor’s edict was handed down to his successor but was also flexible in that subsequent praetors could bring fresh interpretations and add material. This work of the praetors made up a substantial part of the ius honorarium, or the law introduced by magistrates through the issuing of edicts for the public good. This source of law continued in the imperial period until the revision of the praetorian edicts (also the edicts of the aediles relating to the sale of goods in marketplaces) by the jurist Salvius Iulianus on the instructions of Hadrian (for Iulianus’ career see ILS 8973 from Hadrumetum in Africa). This consolidation of the praetorian edict ‘marked the end of the independent legislative power of praetors’ (see Ibbetson (Reference Ibbetson, Bowman and Cameron2005), 193–4). This consolidation shows imperial determination to maintain control of the law, as Hadrian laid down that imperial authority would establish any new legal rules. The reconstruction of the praetor’s edict in modern times was the outstanding work of Lenel (Reference Lenel1927).

The emperor became a major source of law, the pattern for which had been set by Augustus. Having achieved control of the Roman world he did not destroy the mechanism of the law but inserted himself into it and gradually became the central figure in jurisdiction, intervening anywhere if he chose, and exercising both original and appellate jurisdiction in both civil and criminal cases. Thereafter, emperors loomed over the judicial process, acting as judge, sometimes with the help of their consilium of advisers, and answering legal queries from citizens. An imperial decision was a constitutio and it could take several forms (see p. 415). Such was the burden of legal activity for conscientious emperors that they often delegated jurisdiction to senior officials, notably the praetorian prefects, so that over time the role of these officers changed from commanding the imperial bodyguard to exercising administrative and judicial responsibilities (see p. 91). The leading jurists Ulpian, Papinian, and Paul all served as praetorian prefect during the Severan dynasty.

Jurists constituted another important influence on the development of law at Rome. In Roman legal practice there was limited professional expertise. The praetors and judges were not lawyers, and other senior magistrates, such as the consuls, did not necessarily have legal experience. Therefore, magistrates with legal responsibilities turned to jurists, men who in the imperial period studied the law and expressed opinions on jurisprudence. In the republic Cicero defined a jurist as someone who was skilled in the statutes and the procedures which private people made use of in the state, and in giving opinions, helping in litigation, and preparing documents (De Oratore 1.212 with Robinson (Reference Robinson1997), 44). Indeed, in the republic some of the upper classes had been learned in the law, but under the emperors jurists came from varied backgrounds, were often of equestrian rank, and sometimes served in administrative posts. They were the closest Rome came to having professional lawyers, increasingly important as the administration became more complex, citizenship spread, and the burden of litigation became ever greater. When approached they offered guidance to magistrates and judges, gave advice to litigants, answered legal questions, and assisted emperors in various aspects of their jurisdiction. Consequently, in the imperial period jurists were much more involved in public law, and by offering advice at the highest level could influence how the law was interpreted in individual cases, and hence the development of the law. It is a striking aspect of Roman culture that juristic opinion was important in administration and law, though jurists were in general men who were outside the court circle and had no official position of legal leadership (see Watson (Reference Watson1995), 57). But the Romans had long respected an ability to pronounce on legal matters and held that it conferred distinction. For the juristic ius publice respondendi see p. 418.

We do not know how many jurists there were at any time or what communication they had with one another. There are few details of their education and legal training, but many probably attended on established lawyers, absorbing their methods, listening to lectures, and reading textbooks or commentaries (see Harries (Reference Harries, du Plessis and Tuori2016)). Aulus Gellius, writing in the second century ad, comments on his attempts to learn about the law: ‘When I emerged from the nooks and crannies of books and teachers into the company of men and the light of the forum, I remember that I asked of men teaching the law or giving opinions in public in various parts of Rome, whether a quaestor of the Roman people could be summoned to law before the praetor’ (Noctes Atticae 13.13). By a statute of 204 bc lawyers were unable to accept a fee. Augustus maintained this practice, but after a bad-tempered debate in the senate Claudius compromised by laying down a maximum fee of ten thousand sesterces (no. 651). Evidence for payment does indicate increasing professionalism (see p. 366). Furthermore, in the first century ad two traditions within legal scholarship had emerged in which jurists came to be described as Proculians or Sabinians after the leading exponents Proculus and Sabinus (de Zulueta (Reference Zulueta1953), vol. ii, 9–10; Buckland (Reference 494Buckland1975), 25–7). The differences between the two are unclear, but it was perhaps mainly a matter of detail, in that they disagreed on how the law could be applied in individual cases.

Ancient Writers and the Law

The second to early third century ad saw great juristic activity, with the publication of treatises, commentaries, and responses to legal questions. Juristic literature tended to fall into two categories: in one, material was systematically arranged with the purpose of offering education in the law. The only surviving legal textbook is the Institutes of Gaius, published in the second half of the second century ad (see Gordon and Robinson (Reference Gordon and Robinson1988)). Gaius also wrote over thirty other books, and was interested in the history of legal developments and in establishing proper classification of the law. His textbook was very influential in the time of Justinian, whose own Institutes were modelled on it.

The other category aimed to analyse the law: commentaries provided detailed examination of legal institutions, of particular importance being the commentaries on the praetor’s edict, and would have served to guide a practising lawyer. Other literature discussed individual legal cases and might have assisted a lawyer looking for parallels or precedents (Ibbetson (Reference Ibbetson, Bowman and Cameron2005), 187–9). The jurists aimed to explain the law through their examination of imperial decisions and other available evidence. Although each jurist tended to follow an individual approach, which often led to contradictions, sometimes a significant consensus emerged (see Robinson (Reference Robinson1997), 45).

Much of the surviving legal writing is about private law, the ius civile, and much less about public law or constitutional matters. However, that may be partly a result of the remit of the excerptors (see p. 11), and there are indications of substantial works on aspects of public life. For example, Callistratus wrote on law relating to the treasury (fiscus), Ulpian studied the duties of a proconsul and other officials, Marcian wrote on procedure in public courts, Papinian on the laws relating to adultery, and Macer on military law. On private law, Ulpian, Paul, and Pomponius analysed the edict of the praetor, and wrote commentaries on the works of earlier jurists. These works took the form of quotations from the work of the subject and then a detailed line-by-line commentary. There were also many casuistic studies including collections of replies, opinions, and disputes which dealt with cases involving seemingly fact-based situations. For a useful survey see Robinson (Reference Robinson1997), 42–8; Ibbetson (Reference Ibbetson, Bowman and Cameron2005), 184–90; Sirks (Reference Sirks and Johnston2015b), 349–50.

The main publicly sponsored collections of legal writings in the ancient world which are used in this volume are firstly the Codex Justinianus, published in 529, a collection (on the emperor Justinian’s instructions) of imperial laws and rescripts from the three existing collections – Gregorianus, Hermogenianus, and Theodosianus; it consists of twelve books divided according to legal topic with subdivisions dealing with different aspects of the main topic; the rulings are set out in chronological order, from Hadrian to Theodosius, citing the emperor, the date given by consular year, and the name of the petitioner. New material required a fresh edition, published in 534, which constitutes the surviving text (see most recently, Frier (Reference Frier2016)).

In 530 Justinian ordered that the old works of Roman jurists (about 1,500) should be studied, abbreviated, and collected in one book, the Digest. The project was conducted under the guidance of the distinguished jurist Tribonian (Honoré (Reference Honoré1978), 139–86), and published in 533. The Digest extends to fifty books, each dealing with a particular legal topic, divided into sub-headings of related material, though some topics such as testaments took up more space. In each section the names and works of the relevant jurists are cited (see most recently, Watson (Reference Watson1998)). For our collections of Roman legal works we are therefore reliant on the editorial decisions of others, and the existing text resembles a scrapbook, often lacking context because of this process of excerpting by the compilers. Furthermore, in the three centuries between the composition of classical juristic texts and the sixth century, changes will have occurred, and there will certainly have been some omissions and mistakes in the copying, possibly most seriously in heavily consulted works, as they were copied more often (see Robinson (Reference Robinson1997), 56–62; Johnston (Reference Johnston1999), 14–17; 21–4; Matthews (Reference Matthews and Potter2006), 481–9).

In addition to these texts, we have the Fragmenta Vaticana (FIRA 2, pp. 461–540), compiled in the fourth century ad, an assortment of material including extracts from jurists both named and unnamed, and imperial letters and rescripts, some of which do not appear in other legal sources. The Mosaicarum et Romanorum Legum Collatio (FIRA 2, pp. 541–89) is a modern title for a work compiled in the fourth century; its method is to quote in Latin a law of Moses and then provide extracts from Roman law on a similar theme, including imperial letters and rescripts. The Tituli ex corpore Ulpiani or Epitome Ulpiani is possibly a collection of Ulpian’s Regulae, though some have argued that it is an epitome of a post-classical jurist (FIRA 2, pp. 261–314). The Pauli Sententiae is a collection assembled probably at the end of the third century of genuine opinions of Paul (FIRA 2, pp. 319–417).

Finally, it is important to emphasize that ancient writers, historians, commentators, and scholars can be a useful source for the legal process. For example, Quintilian, tutor to the emperor Domitian’s great-nephews, published his textbook for advocates, Training in Oratory, probably before ad 96; it has much to offer about the role of advocates in using or shaping legal procedure (pp. 369– 72). Pliny the Younger recounts in his letters how he appeared (both for the prosecution and the defence) in several important cases before the senate involving alleged corruption and malpractice by provincial governors. He also served as assessor for Trajan at a hearing before the emperor (p. 440). The writings of the Roman land surveyors are valuable because surveyors often dealt with legal problems of land ownership and boundaries, were well-experienced in the law, and consulted jurists, such as Cassius Longinus, ‘a very learned man and legal expert’ (Campbell (Reference Campbell2000), p. 91.31). Surveyors therefore offer valuable evidence on the management of property, responsibilities to neighbours, and the wider question of inter-community jurisdiction (see further p. 10).

Furthermore, collections of inscriptions, papyri, and wax tablets provide crucial evidence for dealings that involved individuals or communities, such as boundary disputes, financial records, contracts, sales documents, birth declarations, and private litigation. This evidence provides a direct record of ancient legal procedure with no extraneous problems related to possible interpolation or lawyerly interpretation. For the value of epigraphy in Roman legal history, see Beggio (Reference Beggio, Plessis and Tuori2016), for papyrology, Alonso Rodríguez (Reference Alonso Rodríguez, du Plessis and Tuori2016).

Law and the Roman World

‘The entire law employed by us relates either to persons or to things or to actions’ (Gaius, Institutes 1.8). In this fundamental threefold division, the law of persons established an individual’s gender, status, and place in society based on free birth, and Roman citizenship, to which there were various avenues. Within this definition, wealth and status produced distinct social groups of which senators and equites were the most important; rank brought enhanced social responsibilities. Outside the upper classes was the social milieu of the plebs and ex-slaves, who were status-conscious in their own way. Within the sphere of the law of persons, the family or household (familia) was of great significance; the pater familias was head of the household and all its members were under his power, which was extensive, though limited by tradition and social convention. Private law issues relating to the household, such as marriage, children, the management of the family, inheritance, and issues of testamentary provision, form an important part of the law of persons, but are not the central topic of this book, except in so far as the state became involved in mandating benefits and penalties in respect of marriage, and in giving soldiers testamentary privileges, both of which gave rise to controversy and debate.

I am therefore principally concerned with the law of things and actions since this study emphasizes life in the public domain overseen by the state, the issues, problems, and outcomes when citizens and subjects encountered at law the agents of the government, as it attempted to manage the huge territory and assets of the empire, and its disparate peoples. The evidence reveals the whole of Roman society at many different levels, not just the usual view from the level of wealth and privilege. We can examine the regulation of the built environment in Rome, and the management of relations between citizens in a crowded urban area; the mechanisms for feeding the population, providing water, entertainment, and other amenities; it was also the state’s responsibility to preserve law and order. Within Italy, the government and individuals were responsible for the legal management of Italian communities and the rural infrastructure, the exercise of jurisdiction, and the extension of social interventions through the authorization of collegia and the alimenta scheme. In the provinces, the evidence shows the crucial role of governors in preserving the delicate relationship with the urban elite on whom Romans relied for administration and tax-collection; Rome’s assets had to be managed and the city infrastructure supervised; municipal regulations had to be devised and enforced; the response to complaints about corrupt or abusive administration helps to show the theory and practice of effective and equitable provincial administration. Throughout the provinces Roman governors and officials encountered local legal systems, laws, traditions, and customs. Since the Romans deployed a limited number of administrators and officials in each province, they did not have the resources to impose the process of Roman law autocratically even if they had so wished. Therefore, in the provinces the government worked with local law and customary practice. Although the governor’s court would normally hear cases involving Roman citizens, the non-citizen population had access to their own courts following traditional practices (see p. 148). The Romans adopted a flexible approach, though of course operating in their best interests. How the Romans adapted and worked with local legal process is a good illustration of how Roman administration functioned with ad hoc solutions rather than strict bureaucratic procedures.

Away from the debate over the nature of the Roman pre-modern economy, legal texts illustrate everyday business dealings, the making of contracts, buying, selling, hiring, and setting up partnerships; how banks functioned, how security was obtained, and how business could be conducted through agents. Even the poorer citizens might aim to own or exploit some property, and legal texts show how possession was acquired and protected, the nature of landholding, how disputes arose and were settled, and the opportunities and problems of tenancy in both the rural and urban environments.

It was important for citizens at all levels of society to feel that they could obtain redress for injury or insult, and we see how this process worked in practice with the development of the concept of fault and negligence. Theft was not normally a criminal offence, and it was up to the wronged citizen to pursue the perpetrator through channels which had various legal consequences. Meanwhile, the permanent jury courts dealt with a series of crimes such as corruption and adultery that mainly were the concern of the upper classes. Confronting the legal system was a challenge for those marginalized by their behaviour, profession, or religion, such as Jews and Christians.

Those who attempted or managed to plead their case in court before a magistrate or judge probably found it a daunting experience; they would need to get to court, find an affordable lawyer, and perhaps face postponements and bias in favour of the wealthy and socially advantaged. Evidence from papyri is particularly useful in assessing how ordinary people fared in court. Central to the entire legal process was the emperor. This went back to Augustus, whose formal legal authority was by no means clear but who operated within the civil and criminal law and offered advice when approached. In a way the emperor could act as a last resort for those seeking justice.

Using Legal Texts

The use of legal texts to illustrate Roman society and economic life is complicated by the question of how far the law influenced developments in society, or merely reflected changes brought about by other factors. On one view, Roman private law may have developed within the juristic tradition without reference to everyday society with which it had little connection (Watson (Reference Watson1995), especially 64–8; (Reference 508Watson, Cairns and du Plessis2007)). There may be a discrepancy between theory and practice in the law, in that lawyers were interested in discussing technical aspects of the law that were legally interesting or challenging, but not necessarily relevant to wider popular concerns. Furthermore, it is difficult to link legislation to specific social or economic conditions or policies, and the law tends to have a bias towards elite Roman interests, which makes it difficult to connect to society. The relationship of law and society and the delicate balance of reciprocal influences remain areas of vigorous current debate, and it is true that legal texts cannot necessarily show how frequently issues arose, or how many people they affected, or how they developed over time.

It is also uncertain how many of the legal cases cited in the Digest are purely imaginary. However, it is unlikely that jurists collected material and assembled arguments that were entirely hypothetical and remote from reality. It is more plausible to suppose that such descriptions will at least represent what was thought likely to happen or what was known to have happened, and that even hypothetical problems were based on legal experience. Although jurists did not present cases in court and were not necessarily interested in the issues that would concern a practising courtroom advocate, they had to prepare material for those who represented real people. Treatises dealing with issues of substantive law, or works of instructions for students, were perhaps not regularly based on real legal queries. However, books dealing with responses or imperial decreta were more likely to be collections of material based on genuine incidents. Sometimes we find that apparently the real names of litigants have been used. And even when stock names are used, they might have been inserted into a real case (Johnston (Reference Johnston1999), 24–6). Ulpian describes an actual case in which he sat with the praetor as legal assessor when the magistrate dealt with an issue involving people from Campania who had extracted a promise under duress (D 4.2.9.3). Naturally, the historian must look for other evidence outside the legal texts, in inscriptions or papyri, to see the methods, procedure, and legal issues in real life and the courtroom (see Crook (Reference Crook1967), 9–12; (Reference Crook1995)). Overall, Matthews’ comment (Reference Matthews and Potter2006, 483) on the value of legal texts is apposite: ‘Whether real, or imagined in order to illustrate points of law, such situations are part of the thought-world of the writers, and so part of the history of their society’.

Many scholars now emphasize the interconnections between legal practice and the history of Roman society and culture. Johnston (Reference Johnston1988, viii) argues that there is good reason for thinking that the institutions of Roman law are important for social history, and that is particularly important in respect of the law of commerce, where, arguably, legal sources have an enormous amount to tell us. Lawyers presumably developed such careful and sophisticated rules only if there was somewhere to use them. The wax tablets from Puteoli demonstrate that businessmen assumed that the whole range of law applied to their activities (see Crook (Reference Crook1994a), 261). In commerce the provision of certain types of contracts in law might encourage business transactions; on the other hand, perhaps extensive business activity created pressure for legal measures, in a kind of circular process. The law of course did protect, at least originally, the political and economic interests of the elite. But even if the law was elite dominated, that itself is relevant as the elite were at the heart of so many activities. All conduct of economic business benefitted from the secure framework of Roman law, with defined process and clear penalties. Frier (Reference Frier2000) cogently argues that that Roman law should not be isolated from its social and economic context.

The writings of the Roman land surveyors allow us to set the theoretical legal resolution of land disputes against what is known of real disputes based on the evidence of inscriptions. For example, in a dispute between the communities of Lamia and Hypata in Macedonia, the governor, instructed by the emperor, arranged for a measurement of boundaries:

This methodology of boundary scrutiny closely resembles the hypothetical principles of boundary designation described by the surveyor Hyginus, which follow natural phenomena, hills, rivers, man-made roads, mountain ridges, watersheds, and monuments (Campbell (Reference Campbell2000), p. 79.32). This inspires confidence that surveyors in dealing with legal issues were not setting out mere theories but discussing real problems and procedures for their resolution (see further Campbell (Reference Campbell2005)).

Even if it is accepted that legal texts are potentially very valuable in understanding government and society in the imperial period, historians using the Digest and the Codex face a long-standing problem of interpretation. In the editing of legal texts dating from several hundred years earlier great change has obviously taken place, since the Digest preserves only about 5 per cent of the original material, and scholars have argued that such texts were updated and made to conform to the law as it was in Justinian’s time. There has been a significant and unresolved debate about the extent of such interpolations (for a useful summary see Robinson (Reference Robinson1997), 105–13; Johnston (Reference Johnston1999), 17–21). However, Watson (Reference Watson1994) gave a fresh slant to the defence of the integrity of classical law in the Codex and Digest, emphasizing the importance of the nature of the instructions that Justinian gave to the compilers. The Codex was to replace earlier collections and include any subsequent constitutions. This action was partly a response to the need for those working in the law to discover and have access to the material in imperial rescripts. In section 2 of the instructions to the compilers, Justinian states:

It appears from this that Justinian did not extend permission for the compilers to make extensive change or reform the law as expressed in existing constitutions. As Watson notes, it was Justinian’s subsequent undertaking, the Fifty Decisions, that was intended to produce reform of substantive law (Watson (Reference Watson1994), 116). This is confirmed by the Preface of the new Code published on 7 April 529.

In the Preface of the second edition of the Codex in 534 Justinian refers to the production of the Digest: ‘and we presented all the old law, free from superfluous prolixity and also condensed, in our Institutes and Digest’ (section 1). He implies that the Digest contains old (classical law) and not new material. In the instructions for its compilation the emperor states:

What is envisaged here is an exercise to tidy up the texts of the jurists and remove repetition within texts, and to avoid putting in the Digest what was already in the Codex. There is no authority to change the content of the texts beyond editorial work. Therefore, the Digest should contain the bulk of classical law, and this is confirmed by the care taken by the compilers to quote the name of the jurist responsible for each text and the work in which it was written, indicating the importance of maintaining the connections with classical law. Arguably there would be little point in embarking on the Digest if Justinian did not want to preserve the work of the classical jurists. Indeed, since the compilers had to work their way through three million lines of text in a few years, there was limited opportunity for substantial rewriting. The fact that contradictions exist within the texts does not necessarily show interpolation, but might reflect the state of classical law itself, which was not static but had been through a continuous process of development in the post-classical period.

On the other hand, it must be admitted that Justinian did grant permission to the compilers to make changes, presumably on their initiative. Abbreviation was to be an important element in this; they also had to make texts as accessible as possible while not adding confusion by rewriting. In addition, there was a significant difference in legal procedure; by Justinian’s day the formulary system had been entirely replaced by cognitio (see pp. 336–7), though this change had been ongoing from the classical period. Watson (pp. 120–2) suggests that while interpolations do appear in the Digest, they can mainly be explained on the grounds that they were of a particular and limited type, firstly in circumstances where an imperial decision had altered substantive law, and the most helpful texts of the jurists to explicate the law therefore needed some qualification; secondly in cases where, of classical legal institutions related by purpose, one had lapsed or been abolished by Justinian, but a juristic text dealing with that institution was retained to help explain the other remaining institution. For example, Justinian abolished the formal method for the conveyance of property (mancipatio) with the result that the informal traditio was now used on all occasions. This meant that in editing the words of classical jurists mancipatio was replaced by traditio (for these legal terms, see p. 246).

In this volume I accept the premise that the Digest and other legal sources represent, in the words of Fergus Millar, ‘an almost inexhaustible treasure house of economic and social history, and of ideologies, conceptions and attitudes’ (Reference Millar1986, 272). I have selected texts from the period c. 31 bc – ad 235 to illustrate not just the responsibilities of emperors and magistrates in the application of the law, but the plans, activities, and troubles of a wide range of people in various social, business, and legal contexts, and how, against the dynamic of ruler and subjects, the local population and Rome often found a way of co-operating. In this unfolding story the empire changed and developed, but with an underlying stability that encouraged the consistent engagement of individuals with the law and the government.