Law and Life of Rome (90 B.C – A.D. 212)
J.A. Crook
Number of quotes: 16
Book ID: 127 Page: 28
Section: 4B
There is indeed a famous text in the Digest, attributed to Salvius Julianus:‘Ingrained custom is not unreasonably maintained as, as good as law; this is what is known as the law based on men’s habits. For sincere actual legislation is only binding because it is accepted by the judgment of the people, those things of which the people have approved without any writing at all will justly be binding on everyone. And therefore the following principle is also quite rightly accepted, that legislation can be abrogated not only by the vote of a legislator but also by desuetude, with the tacit agreement of all men.’
Quote ID: 2889
Time Periods: 03
Book ID: 127 Page: 33
Section: 3A4,4B
it was a part of the philosophy of the Romans that the duty of a citizen included taking this share of the burdens of the law: acting as judge, arbitrator or juror and supporting his friends in their legal affairs by coming forward as witness, surety and so on.
Quote ID: 2890
Time Periods: 03
Book ID: 127 Page: 41
Section: 4B
One of the most extraordinary facts of Roman law is that a slave manumitted (that is, given his freedom) in proper form before a magistrate or by will, and not in contravention of certain Augustan legislation, by a Roman citizen master, became himself a Roman citizen.
Quote ID: 2891
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 127 Page: 41
Section: 4B
They certify that the emperor:‘has given citizenship to them, their children and descendants, and conubium with such wives as they should subsequently marry, but only to one wife for each individual’.
Quote ID: 2892
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 127 Page: 56
Section: 4B
In the agricultural society of early Roman times, the farmer worked the land with his whole family, sons and slaves. And between sons and slaves in the old man’s power, there was not all that much difference- except in ultimate expectations. To the end of Roman law, the rules about filius familias and servus are curiously alike; the ‘power of life and death’ applies over both, neither can own anything - they can have only peculium - and so on.Pastor John’s note: Gal. 4
Quote ID: 2893
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 127 Page: 83
Section: 4B
One consequence of conviction in certain civil suits and (probably) all criminal trials was ‘infamy’, infamia or ignominia. Infamy could indeed arise in other ways, and it could have other consequences besides legal ones; the subject is complicated and much has been written about it. The concept enshrines very characteristic Roman attitudes. The small aristocratic society of early Rome, valuing above all overt esteem (existimatio, dignitas), dreaded its loss exceedingly. The disapproval of a man’s peers was channeled through the censors, the customary guardians of public morality, who provided a sharp extra-legal sanction against behavior that offended accepted canons by their ‘censorial mark’ the nota censorial entered against a man’s name in the census-lists, which was both an expression and at the same time a cause of his being held ‘infamous’.
Quote ID: 2894
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 127 Page: 108
Section: 4B
In one sense, though not what the Romans meant by ius vitae et necis, a ‘power of life and death’ was regularly exercised: it was the right of the paterfamilias to decide whether new-born children should be reared or exposed (their mother had no voice in the matter), and exposure was common and not a crime.
Quote ID: 2895
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 127 Page: 168
Section: 4B
...little practical importance’. Theft was, like damage, a tort - though a penal one; you sued the thief in the civil courts, for your property plus substantial penalties (the thief caught in the act and the robber with violence were liable for fourfold, most other thieves for double).Pastor Johns note: Ex 21-23
Quote ID: 2896
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 127 Page: 256/258
Section: 4B
The first duty was military service.…
Taxation was a second universal liability.
….
Finally, upon cives Romani were incumberant the civic responsibilities of guardianship and acting as judges and jurors in the courts of Roman Law.
Quote ID: 2898
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 127 Page: 265
Section: 4B
The populous Romanus was never allowed free political assembly; not only its voting assemblies but even public meetings for political speeches had to be presided over by a magistrate, who controlled the proceedings.Pastor John’s note: Acts. clubs
Quote ID: 2899
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 127 Page: 265
Section: 4B
Whether this statute should be attributed to Julius Caesar or to Augustus remains unsettled; Suetonius seems to attribute it to each of them in turn, but the facts that the ancient ban on independent political meetings turns up in the charter of Urso [PJ: 44 BC] perhaps tips the balance in favor of giving this important Julian Law to Caesar. It enacted that, except for certain time-honored formal societies, every other association whatsoever must henceforward be licensed.PJ: clubs
Quote ID: 2900
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 127 Page: 267
Section: 4B
The most prominent, and perhaps genuinely much of the most important, was a combination of cult to a patron deity and social get-together, with plenty of hierarchy and precedence such as people love.….
They found occasionally petitioning the government about their interests, and the ‘election posters’ of Pompeii testify that there at least they played a vigorous part in local politics, proclaiming their support for candidates for office; though precisely at Pompeii there were illicit collegia which were dissolved after disturbances in AD 59. But common action in pursuit of economic or political aims (especially if it led to rioting) might be regarded by the government as subversive; strike meetings by the bakers’ union at Ephesus, for example, were sternly repressed, and at Ephesus again the reader will recall not only Paul’s clash with the silversmiths’ union who saw their livelihood in danger but also the warning of the town clerk that public demonstrations about this would look to Rome like a political riot.
PJ: clubs
Quote ID: 2902
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 127 Page: 271
Section: 4B
Everyone is struck by apparent contrast between the simplicity and lack of savagery of the penalties for crime in the Republican age of Rome and the diversity and increasing brutality of those under the Principate.
Quote ID: 2903
Time Periods: 01234
Book ID: 127 Page: 273
Section: 4B
Exile in its various forms was on the whole for upper class, hard labor for the lower. Beyond this came the death penalty (which in the ‘extraordinary’ jurisdiction really meant death by decapitation), and beyond even that came the summa supplicia, aggravated death by crucifixion, burning, or being thrown to the beasts in the circus.
Quote ID: 2904
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 127 Page: 280
Section: 4B
Now the Jews of Judaea were a nation, a clear ethnic group, and their special habits of religious thought well known throughout the Mediterranean world form of old; their cult was given special license and sanction by the Romans as a national idiosyncrasy.….
Judaea was destroyed after several national rebellions, but even so the Jews of the Dispersion were never persecuted for their religion. It has been plausibly suggested that they were a specially protected, exempted and sanctioned religious minority because it was admitted by all that they were loyally adhering to their ancestral tradition - their own ‘faithful ritual’, however repugnant it might seem to outsiders. The Christians, on the other hand, were the rejecters of the state religion not on the basis of an ancestral and recognizable tradition, but in rejection of that too; they were therefore (and we cannot escape from this) followers of a religio illicta, alone punishable as such.
Quote ID: 2905
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 127 Page: 283
Section: 4B
A third consideration is that, quite contrary to what one might tend to suppose, in our period Roman law was decidedly nonecumenical. This is in many ways a merit; Rome believed in her mission to govern peoples and to maintain the ‘Roman Peace’, and one can find many tributes to the blessings of that peace, but she did not believe in any mission to spread the institutions, as opposed to the protection, of Roman law beyond the range of those who wished (and were judged worthy) to accept her citizenship.….
Rome gave citizenship - lavishly enough - with one hand, so she diminished its rights, for all save honestiores, with the other.
….
Rome took care everywhere to secure upper-class control.
Quote ID: 2906
Time Periods: 0123
End of quotes