The Laws of the Kings – A View from a Distance

Given the huge problem of the reliability of the sources, this chapter tries to give an account of the emergence of Roman legislation which almost does away with both texts and reference to the historical narrative. It focuses on the sort of law which a settlement of Rome’s size and complexity would have needed. It therefore looks at both the archaeological evidence, and the anthropological accounts of co-operation and early lawmaking, especially in regard to markets and the emergence of religious systems. It concludes that Rome almost certainly did have laws and regulations, that these may have involved the kings, but that the legal texts give us only an oblique understanding.

The leges regiae through Tradition, Historicity and Invention: A Comparison of Historico-literary and Jurisprudential Sources

An interdisciplinary approach to historical criticism allows us to investigate the tradition of the royal laws and their collection, ostensibly made by one Papirius at the start of the Republic. Despite the lengthy, stratified process of formation and transmission of historical memory by historians, grammarians, writers and jurists from the late Republic onwards, the identification of certain authentic elements of these laws is possible. In the case of the law on paelex, attributed to Numa, a philological analysis suggests its archaic origins, even if we cannot prove that Numa was the drafter of this law. The law appears to be made up of a precept (prohibition against approaching the altar or the temple of Juno) and a sanction (sacrifice with loose hair). The significance of the loose hair, typical signs of pain and penance, is the key to reading the law. By the enactment of this law, the social status of the paelex was diminished, analogous to that of a married man's concubine.

Central Italian Elite Groups as Aristocratic Houses in the Ninth to Sixth Centuries BCE

This chapter demonstrates the applicability of C. Lévi-Strauss’s “House Society” model for considering the role of kinship in the early moments of state formation and urbanization in Iron Age Latium and Etruria. After a brief theoretical overview of the model, the discussion focuses on two main axioms which are often overlooked in the model’s application to the ancient world: (1) a physical house does not make a social House, and (2) a single House does not make a Society. This is followed by an overview of how material evidence from sites ranging from Vetulonia to Osteria dell’Osa and textual evidence from the Twelves Tables can be interpreted through the lens of a “House Society” to create new models for the development of complex social systems in central Italy.

Finding Melanesia in Ancient Rome: Mauss’ Anthropology of nexum

Marcel Mauss’ The Gift is an original and unique anthropology of law. Law is the object and medium of the analysis, and the conceptual and political strategies of the text are closely adapted to the symptomatic tensions that Mauss elicits from law. And for Mauss these tensions were concentrated in one particular legal institution – the archaic Roman institution of nexum. As I argue in this chapter, the technicalities of the legal institution of nexum – however they are now recollected – should be seen as largely subordinate to the social-structural and economic forces that shaped ancient Roman society. And this approach might in turn lead to a set of questions that Mauss would have found entirely pertinent, as to what nexum might tell us about the genealogy or deep infrastructure of debt and precarity in contemporary societies.

Niebuhr and Bachofen: New Forms of Evidence on Roman History

In 1816, B.G. Niebuhr, having already published his important History of Rome, was appointed by his king to be the Prussian ambassador in Rome, where he remained for some years in that office. In that period he had the opportunity to acquire a good knowledge of the Roman Campagna. With reference to the Roman (and Greek) archaeological remains which he came across in his journeys, he proposed the hypothesis that the remains of ancient centuriatio could be found in that part of Italy. Some years later, in his Italienische Reise, J.J. Bachofen, for the first time, began to consider the symbolic elements in the Roman tombs as the evidence of a stadium of ancient civilisations older than that of Roman and Greek patriarchal societies in classical times. Some years later he published his famous Mutterrecht, one of the first important works of modern anthropology.

The Twelve Tables and the leges regiae: A Problem of Validity

Regal legislation is reported by tradition and attached to some very unlikely characters, as Romulus or Numa Pompilius. On the other hand, tradition makes the creators of the Twelve Tables a group of felons that also seems implausible. While royal legislation is attached to mythical or semi-mythical characters, in comparison, the decemvirs appear as quite mundane, while their leader, Appius Claudius, is simply vile, and his own evilness makes the second decemvirate stand as fictional. In fact, his attempt to rape Verginia seems to mirror the crimes of Tarquin the Proud’s relatives. The change in the status of the lawgivers is quite evident, when the eldest legislation is accounted as the work of a demigod, while the latter is the result of a criminal mind. The main focus of this paper will be to explain this difference and offer a hypothesis on the relation between statutes and legislators. Our main question is: why did the early Romans need to make their lawgivers divine characters, while during the early Republic they were not only men, but felons?

Beyond the Pomerium: Expansion and Legislative Authority in Archaic Rome

This chapter explores the principle of legislative authority in early Rome as it relates to the pomerium, the comitia curiata, the comitia tributa, and the traditional powers of patres familiarum. It argues for an ongoing negotiation between various entities within Rome during the first half of the fifth century BC over which held legal authority over which areas. It suggests that, visible in the legal disputes and tensions that mark the early ‘Struggle of the Orders’, there may be an authentic memory of Rome’s early legal evolution which saw the community, under the guise of the comitia tributa, attempting to extend its authority beyond the geographic boundary of the pomerium, which had bound the comitia curiata, and into the traditional sphere of influences of the patres familiarum. Although this early fifth century BC attempt was ultimately unsuccessful, it set the foundation for Rome’s later use of the tribes and comitia tributa as a mechanism to organize and control territory outside of the community’s normal boundaries.

The leges regiae in Livy: Narratological and Stylistic Strategies

This chapter discusses how Livy in his first book presents the leges regiae (some of which can be found exclusively in Ab Urbe condita) in light of the following categories: religious life; civitas’ fundamental institutions; political life; war and army; agrarian laws; granting of citizenship. It appears that in Livy the leges are straightforward and detailed when they are related to the religious sphere, while they appear more concise and vague when they are measures of a heterogeneous nature. Livy also systematically adjusts his narrative technique on the basis of the function assigned to a law. He shows particular care in reporting technical formulas when he wishes to emphasize the sacredness and longevity of laws concerning founding traditions and “constitutional norms”; on the other hand, Livy emphasizes those aspects of the laws that would appear in line with the characteristics that he wants to attribute to the kings.

The Dawn of Roman Law

When the compilers of Justinian’s Digest in the sixth century CE reflected on the origins of Roman law as a legal order, they decided that the topic was of such importance that it had to be placed at the very front of the Digest, in book 1 title 2, directly after the introductory title in which central concepts such as ‘justice’ and ‘law’ were explained....

Authority and Display in Sixth-Century Etruria: The Vicchio Stele

The discovery of an inscribed stele at the sanctuary of Poggio Colla (Vicchio, FI) provides new information about the sanctuary and its cults and raises important questions about literacy and elite authority at the northern edge of Etruria in the Archaic Period. The Vicchio stele has a very long series of inscriptions, possibly the longest Etruscan lapidary inscription to date. As law, the stele could have been consulted and interpreted by the literate few, but its authority would have been easily understood even without being read. It is as powerful a symbol as the imposing temple that arose in its place in the next century, a temple whose own authority rested on the foundation, physical and symbolic, of the Vicchio stele.