‘Jurists in the Shadows’: The Everyday Business of the Jurists of Cicero’s Time

In this chapter I try to define who was a jurist in the Late Republic arguing that, among others, legal representatives and the staff of the magistrates had considerable legal knowledge. Some of these lesser known jurists are presented and I explain why these jurists are for the most part not included in modern manuals and why they should be taken into account.

Multiple Charges, Unitary Punishment and Rhetorical Strategy in the Quaestiones of the Late Roman Republic

The anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium and Cicero’s early De Inventione place great emphasis on the Judicial type of oratory that takes place in the Roman courts. By teaching their readers how to speak in this context through comments and examples, the two texts also provide a unique insight into the law, legal systems and personnel in the early first century BCE. This chapter focuses on the information they provide about the people involved in the Roman courts: the jurists, the advocates, and the jurors.

Jurors, Jurists and Advocates: Law in the Rhetorica ad Herennium and De Inventione

The anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium and Cicero’s early De Inventione place great emphasis on the Judicial type of oratory that takes place in the Roman courts. By teaching their readers how to speak in this context through comments and examples, the two texts also provide a unique insight into the law, legal systems and personnel in the early first century BCE. This chapter focuses on the information they provide about the people involved in the Roman courts: the jurists, the advocates, and the jurors.

Cicero and the Italians: Expansion of Empire, Creation of Law

After 70 BC, Italians were legally equal to old Roman citizens, in that they could avail themselves of the ius civile. Nevertheless, there are indications in Cicero’s work that not all Italians were considered equal by the Romans who sat in judgement on cases involving an Italian. Cicero often had to fight against Roman prejudice against Italians and other allies, arguing that they possessed the same moral qualities as Romans and should therefore be treated equally under the law. As the Roman state continued to expand, the inhabitants of the provinces adopted the place that the Italian allies had taken in the hierarchy of peoples. The Romans were not ready to give the provincials citizenship, but created two mechanisms to defend the provincials: treaties and the lex repetundarum.

Servius, Cicero and the Res Publica of Justinian

Cicero’s correspondence with Servius after the death of Tullia justifies cultural attitudes which denied legal agency to the populus;Servius’ juristic successors also perpetuated the role of elite legal thinkers as “procurators” and Pomponius’ history of jurisprudence did not acknowledge the transition from ‘Republic” to Empire, which removed constitutional agency from the populus. Servius, Cicero and the successor jurists thus paved the way for the res publica of the autocrat Justinian.

Early-career Prosecutors: Forensic Activity and Senatorial Careers in the Late Republic

The focus of this chapter is on the ways in which members of the senatorial order in the late Republic (and those who aspired to join that order) exploited a knowledge of the law to further their careers. Cicero is the best-documented example, whose activity demonstrates a complex relationship between those who claimed expert theoretical knowledge of the law and those who spoke in the courts, between ‘jurists’ and ‘orators’. Drawing on the results of a ERC-funded project based at the University of Glasgow which is editing the fragments of Republican oratory (‘The Fragments of Republican Roman Oratory’), this chapter explores the intersections between political careers and the varieties of forensic activity. It argues that forensically-active senators formed only a very small proportion of the Senate, and that forensic activity was not a normal part of public life, but as a specialised task which only added consistent value to a career if pursued with diligence and a high degree of technical competence.

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Law’s Nature: Philosophy as a Legal Argument in Cicero’s Writings

The paper deals with the use of philosophical arguments in Cicero's legal writings, in particular his forensic speeches. It tries to demonstrate that Cicero developed a unique, holistic theory of law, which is not based on a juxtaposition of natural law and positive law, but tries to deduce the nature of law from the nature of men. Even though this theory probably did not influence the writings of the later classical jurists in a direct way, Roman law was open enough for philosophical arguments to allow Cicero to make use of this theory within the legal discourse. Using examples from Cicero's forensic speeches, the paper demonstrates how Cicero refers to his philosophical concept in order to develop specifically legal arguments.

A Barzunesque View of Cicero: From Giant to Dwarf and Back

The main argument proferred is that de editio maior of Ciceró's Topica by Corpus Christi professor Tobias Reinhardt provides credence to the hypothesis that this work articulates the theoretical underpinning of Roman legal science.

Introduction

The centre of gravity of legal development therefore from time immemorial has not lain in the activity of the state, but in society itself. (Ehrlich 1962: 390) In his 1995 book, The Spirit of Roman Law (Athens, GA 1995), Alan Watson included a chapter provocatively titled ‘Cicero the outsider’. By locating this chapter towards the end of the book, Watson hinted that any discussion of Cicero in the context of the spirit of Roman law (a difficult concept in itself) could only really form part of an appendix (in this case Appendix A) to a book of this kind. The gist of this chapter, following the then dominant Romanist view, is that ‘Cicero’s outlook [was] remarkably different from that of the Roman jurists’ (at 200)....