ROMAN LAW: OPENING THE SYSTEM

Sven Günther

IHAC, NENU, Changchun

Throughout the 20th century, Roman Law was mainly an enigma for historians and classical philologists alike. Its position in the Faculties of Law as Legal History and a systematic, and sometimes even synchronic, perspective of many researchers on legal sources together with self-referential tendencies made it appear a closed system, even though the nestor of Altertumswissenschaften,Theodor Mommsen had once encompassed the trias history, law and philology,albeit with his own taxonomy and connected with his liberal ideas that can be frequently found in his R?mische Geschichte and R?misches Staatsrecht.1His Staatsrecht is now again available in an edition with a comprehensive introduction: Mommsen 2017 (reprint of the 3rd ed. 1887).

For this reason, many researchers in these separated fields did not recognize the new approaches and concepts on the “other” sides. Similar developments had apparently already occurred in the nineteenth century when the so-called Pandectists2See the critical remarks of Haferkamp and Repgen 2017.detached themselves from the historians and philologists, and thereby became increasingly less acquainted with legal sources and “alternative”methods of interpretation.3See Günther 2012.

However, this has fundamentally changed in recent years, first due to the attempts and steps taken by both sides to communicate about theories, models and methods, and second due to the mere need of accessing “new” approaches as well as materials in an increasingly more competitive research environment,not only within the specific fields but also in consequence of policies aimed at reducing funding for the Humanities (including history).

A landmark with respect to integrating Roman legal topics into the socioeconomic context is The Oxford Handbook of Roman Law and Society.4Du Plessis, Ando and Tuori 2016Divided into seven sections with 50 articles in total, the scope of possible connections between law and society becomes obvious from the beginning though not every possible topic is covered. Sources, constitution and public law, legal experts and their culture, law of procedure, questions of status and private law- the interdependences and particularly the praxis of law in Roman society is dealt with in many of the contributions. Of particular interest are surely (1) the activities of the praetors using their quite flexible praetorian edict, (2) legal fictions to bridge the gap between static law and continuously changing political,social and economic developments as well as practical necessities, (3) the frames of jurisprudents who are no longer understood as fungible but as individuals each of whom belong to specific cultural contexts (in the form of education,functions within the state administration, philosophical background, even style of writing, etc.), and (4) certain areas where law is closely connected with other fields like economy and status, and a mutual interaction between regulations and socio-economic behavior can be proven with a high degree of certainty.5For the economic sphere, see the survey of Günther and Reinard 2017. Regarding the connection between New Institutional Economics and Law, see especially Kehoe, Ratzan and Yiftach 2015.Other areas such as the law of obligations, property rights or family law are mainly touched from a legal viewpoint. Nonetheless, the bibliographies appended to each article usually provide a useful tool for further studies. The source- as well as the key word-indices help to see the sometimes important connections between different articles and sections (e.g. status law, family law and economic activities). Thus, the Oxford Handbook provides a good basis for further studies along the borderline of legal and historical spheres, and even helps to cross them though many more topics could have been covered or are not treated in full.6Cf. the rather critical review of Sirks 2018a, with details on specific papers. He is also certainly right in criticizing the narrow focus on the classical period, the omission of specific topics like military law,religious law or international relations and thus the non-Handbuch character of the volume. However,I interpret the handbook to be mainly for classicists and ancient historians who normally do not or even consciously avoid dealing with Roman law. A full and updated treatment of Roman private law,supplementing Max Kaser's Das r?mische Privatrecht (Kaser 1971-1975), is in preparation by Ulrike Babusiaux, Christian Baldus, Wolfgang Ernst, Franz-Stefan Meissel, Thomas Rüfner and Johannes Platschek (Babusiaux et al. forthcoming).So a reading should be accompanied by a systematic introduction to Roman law. The new one, by Rafael Domingo, a promotor of global law system that has the human beings not states at its core, is very helpful in this respect.7Domingo 2018.The individual chapters provide concise and well-written descriptions of the specific legal topics, systematic and easy-to-follow structures of the sub-divisions, and a “further reading” bibliography at the end. Particularly useful is the chapter on basic legal concepts and values (pp. 3-26) where he gives comprehensive definitions of terms such as ius, iustitia, mos maiorum etc. The section on the historical development of the Roman constitution is rather uncritical towards the sources, especially regarding early Roman history, and his narrative of legal institutions, concepts and issues is equally uncritical, as it clearly admires the everlasting global and elegant system Roman law, and Roman Law Studies, have established.

Fundamental, though very provocative, were and are the studies of the legal historian Okko Behrends on Roman public law, of which nine (partly monograph-long) essays are now easily accessible in his selected papers.8Behrends 2014.On the one hand, he frequently points out, and challenges, the orthodox views of legal historians who rely heavily on an understanding of Roman law formed by Mommsen, such as the rule of magistrates over law and law-making procedures,a reflection of 19th century national liberalism in the Second German Empire.On the other hand, however, he does not have much interest in the situational context and the individual actors involved in legal decisions but rather studies the underlying principles, in respect of Greek philosophical impact on law and jurists in particular, and rhythms of developments; for instance, in the case of the Gracchian “revolution” and its aftermath where law, mixed with philosophical ideas of usefulness, benefits for underprivileged members of society and educational aspects, became political and led in the end to the emperor as unframed lord-protector of people's rights. One may disagree with several of Behrends' judgments, for instance, when he reconstructs the philosophical background of jurists out of Cicero's philosophical writings (which is a kind of circular argument), or when he suggests a dichotomy in early Roman society in times of peace and war with respect to the participation of the people in lawmaking procedures, signifying a reduction in the king's role. However, his reflections are thought-provoking, analyze the sources in depth and must be refuted with detailed and concise arguments. Yet perusing the papers would enrich any study on Roman constitutional law from its beginnings to the Principate.

Behrend's philhellenic-philosophical approach to Republican jurists also forms one part of the comprehensive volume on Roman Law in the Late Roman Republic, edited by Paul du Plessis.9Du Plessis 2016.Entitled Cicero's Law, it reveals the extent to which our view on legal development in this period is based on the writings of Cicero, who was, for a long time, regarded as a politician, philosopher, orator,etc.: anything but a jurist. Many papers, explicitly or implicitly, refute this view, and aim to replace it, in contesting it with nuanced studies of how Cicero and his works reflect profound legal knowledge and discourses in the context of the political challenges of the Late Roman Republic. Divided into three sections (“On Law;” “On Lawyers;” “On Legal Practices”), the eleven papers modify traditional perspectives on the law and legal practice in the Late Roman Republic in three respects. First, it is shown that it is not possible to clearly distinguish Greek philosophy, oratory and the traditional Roman legal principles forming law and its application in Cicero's time, but rather that all frames can be read in the specific works of Cicero. Thus, his Topica can be read as a legal handbook but simultaneously as a piece of rhetorical advice and a discourse on philosophical principles; further, his legal-philosophical writings like De Re Publica and De Legibus interrelate with his forensic speeches, for example, with regard to the construction of a good citizen and a bad outlaw. Second, it becomes clear that the discussion of juristic issues was a prerogative of the elite, and very common among them. So, the legal knowledge of magistrates and their staff,business administrators and jurists helped to rule the Roman state and formed the idea of the sovereignty and continuity of law, even later after the transition,or transformation, to the Principate. On the other hand, the elite's competition and consensus demanded a broad, manifold appearance that ran at times against an emerging specialization, and could be used against such experts, particularly on the public stage, foremost by Cicero himself. Third, the analysis of how audiences are addressed and targeted is a central achievement of the volume.While advocates attempted to use their networks as well as behavioral norms of the judging elite to create “one mind” in favor, or against, a person in court -which is also reflected in theoretical works like the Rhetorica ad Herennium or Cicero's first extant work, De Inventione - the grants and spread of Roman law,procedures or forms of actions to allies and conquered people all contributed to forming an Imperium Romanum (“Roman Empire”) that was no longer only an imperium Romanum (“Roman rule”).10On this framing, see also Ando 2011.

Into these frameworks provided by the collected papers fits the extensive commentary on Cicero's agrarian speeches of the year 63 BC by Gesine Manuwald.11Manuwald 2018.Although a classical philologist, Manuwald does not restrict herself to an analysis of literary devices, rhetorical structures et sim., with thefig-leaf of a short historical introduction. One the one hand, she tackles important historical issues like the preceding agrarian legislation, to place the bill of the plebeian tribune Rullus into a wider context.12Her statement that the bill of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus “intended viritane assignments of ager publicus to poor citizens (plots of 500 iugera each, plus 250 iugera per child, with a maximum of 1,000 iugera per person) to be inalienable (Liv. Epit. 58)” (Manuwald 2018, xv) is implausible, because it is probably the maximum size of public land for those already in possession, i.e. the wealthy. Often,following the later Lex Agraria of 111 BC, 30 iugera are thought to be the basic allocation, but that is contested. Cf. Stockton 1979, 48 and 215-216.On the other hand, she takes the audience into consideration when she treats the political and rhetorical strategy of Cicero who here, as elsewhere, was very bold in creating frames of “good” citizens and“evil” outsiders harming the res publica. Her work will surely be the reference for further scholarship on the interplay between law, legal procedure, rhetoric and socio-economic as well as political frames in Cicero's orations.

The emergence and style of imperial adjudication in the Early Roman Empire is, along with the legislative function of the emperor, perhaps the battlefield with the most controversies due to the fragmentary source material. Based on one's specific opinion of the Principate as a whole, with the emperor as either a legal and legitimate ruler established by law or, on the contrary, the Principate itself being a revolutionary abolition of the Republic with only the fa?ade left,the accretion of jurisdictional powers to the emperor was interpreted from either a legalistic or a power-based point of view. With his new study of the narratives around imperial judgements, Kaius Tuori shows the weaknesses of both positions and carves out how different roles and narrated role-expectations as well as communications formed the basis of the gradual usurpation of jurisdictional functions by the emperor, beginning in the Late Roman Republic with the emergence of individual rulers, in particular Julius Caesar.13Tuori 2016.In this respect, magistrates' legal power like that of the praetor - but much more so- the jurisdictional power of provincial governors played only one part in the whole story. Pull-factors like the role of a patron, the necessity of control and a standardization of different legal procedures were intertwined with push-factors like the quest of people for legal protection, especially in the East where the ruler enjoyed far greater authority due to Hellenistic (and oriental) traditions,and the easier legal procedures provided by the imperial court (cognitio- instead of formula-procedure). Under this perspective, Tuori examines important source materials like the literary descriptions of the jurisdictional behavior of emperors in Tacitus or Pliny the Younger, Mirror-of-Prince-literature like Seneca's De Clementia, but also epigraphic evidence (SC de Cn. Pisone patre; Lex de Imperio Vespasiani), and places them in the specific context. Very useful is, furthermore,the extensive list of legal cases judged from the time of Julius Caesar down to Severus Alexander in an appendix (pp. 299-416). Although many of the individual interpretations of the sources used can be disputed, for instance the rather short discussion of the restoration of law by Augustus and the role of the jurists therein, or the main focus on actual judgements rather than further including the regulation of jurisdictional procedures (e.g. in the Lex Portorii Asiae),14On such jurisdictional measures, and their perception by later jurists, Snee Zhang and Günther 2017.the work provides a great step forward towards integrating the concept of narratives and their anchoring in existing frameworks of communicator and targeted audience in legal studies.

Simone Blochmann's study of the political culture of the Senate in the Early Roman Empire15Blochmann 2017.takes us in the same direction, although approaching it from a historical perspective. Based on theoretical considerations of communicationmechanisms and symbolic communication and (re-)presentation of both, the emperor and the senators, her analysis lays particular stress on the procedures of the Senate's meetings as a mirror of the complexity of symbolic acts and a ritualized system. Therefore, she also deals with the new senatorial jurisdiction in one chapter where she examines the emerging maiestas-procedure in particular(pp. 105-124). In contrast to Tacitus, she sees conflicts and opposition within the Senate as largely directed not so much against the emperor himself as merely reflecting contests among the aristocrats themselves. The newly acquired“power” to judge maiestas-cases became, in her opinion, a huge challenge for the customarily consensus-orientated body, particularly due to the unclear role of the emperor, the lack of clear criteria for procedures and judgements, and the uncertainty of how to deal with socio-political equals being both accused and accusing, within the Senate and the senatorial order. One may add the idea that such internal struggles and instability may have been one aim of those emperors who could thereby destroy, or at least temporarily disturb, existing elite networks for the sake of stabilizing their precarious positions, particularly in the early imperial period. Further analysis could show that for many other measures, such as the Augustan moral legislation or taxation policies, such an interpretation could indeed be convincingly explanatory.

Anchored in this discussion of the creative space and scope of design, the impressive doctoral thesis of Raphael Brendel opens an innovative historical perspective on legal sources from the time of the emperor Julian. In meticulous detail, he examines the extant sources in a systematic way by carefully analyzing the meaning of the often cryptic texts, embedding them in the specific historical and legal context, comparing them with legal acts as well as the documents of other emperors, and particularly by a cautious interpretation of the whole legislation including the secondary literature, over which he has an excellent command.Brendel thus arrives not only at a better understanding of the specific regulations by sorting out tendentious interpretations by earlier scholars - usually judging Julian's imperial constitutions to be anti-Christian in accordance with the general picture of this emperor as the “Apostate.” Moreover, by anchoring himself in the enduring debate about Fergus Millar's “government by response” with his hypothesis of“innovation on demand,” he can also modify and thereby usefully dismantle the picture of the emperor as only “passive-reactive,” advanced by Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner in his analysis of the governmental style of Valentinian I.16See Schmidt-Hofner 2008.

For further research on Late Antique Law, the English translation - with facing Latin and Greek texts - of the Codex Justinianus, edited by Bruce W.Frier, is essential.17Frier 2016. See also the remarks of Qiang Li in the survey of Byzantine Law Studies, forthcoming in JAC 34/1.Based on the life-work of Justice F. H. Blume who devoted every free minute to it and applied not only his historical knowledge but also his expertise in legal practice, it is the long-awaited edition, replacing the dated and unreliable translation of Samuel P. Scott. The lengthy introduction (pp. xivclxxxvi) gives a list of titles in the Codex Justinianus; another chapter deals with the tantalizing evolution of the translation by Blume and its final revision;18See: http://www.uwyo.edu/lawlib/blume-justinian (20.02.2018).a note on the problematic dating of many imperial constitutions as well as the attempts of researchers offers a perspective into the confusion, and ongoing discussion;and a particularly useful chapter by Simon Corcoran goes into the genesis and transmission of the text (with a description of the surviving textual witnesses),from antecedent codices, which were named after their writing material and not according to their (later ascribed) code-character, the Justinian commission, its work of compilation and revising the text up to the modern editions. This last mentioned chapter has to deal with various amendments and annotations which had flowed into the text, testifying to the historical development of the various appropriations over time. The presentation of the original texts with a translation which is not English-Latin legalese, along with explanatory notes and cross-references, as well as occasional further comments makes the work useful, especially when one takes advantage of the glossary of important law terms provided in volume 3 (pp. 3050-3087) and, for historical studies, the chronological list of constitutions (pp. 3088-3176). As research on the Codex Justinianus has often been unjustly avoided by giving preference to the Digests, this new edition offers a chance to revive interest- which has never ceased - and is complemented by the possibility of updating translations on a webpage so that there is an excellent opportunity to combine a printed edition with the potential of digital scholarly exchange.19See: http://www.iuscivile.com/materials/codex (20.02.2018).

Recently, the relation between imperial law and local law (in out-dated phraseology: “Reichsrecht” and “Volksrecht”) has gained increasing attention,particularly through the legal culture-approach. In this sense, law is not seen as a detached philosophical system imposed on subjects by an abstract “state” -with several surviving niches where local legal traditions were applied, when the interests of the imperial authority were not touched.20On the legal integration of Italians during the Republic, see Roselaar 2016.Instead, the use of law is seen as a bottom-up process whereby different factors and actors influenced the specific decision to use one, or even combine several, law-spheres. A good example of this approach is the revised doctoral thesis of Kimberley Czajkowski on the Babatha and Salome Komaise archives whose documents cover the transition from Nabataean to Roman rule in Arabia. Czajkowski studies the extant documents in various languages (Nabataean and Jewish Aramaic; Greek)and does not use the traditional either-or-approach by which scholars seek to relate certain formulae, expressions or forms to Jewish, Greek or Roman legal systems. Instead, she rather carefully examines the contexts of the documents:the actors and their known background (foremost the two women Babatha and Salome Komaise), the cases and parties involved, the targeted audiences and officials, the scribes. As a result, she can lead us out of the quite common thinking in law systems that must have con fined the participants, and shows the potential of those documents to mirror the extent to which the composers and parties consciously or unconsciously acted within their specific frameworks of experience, reference and purpose. Most importantly, she can successfully point out that the extant documents were often composed to target specific audiences, either real authorities (Roman officials) who were easier to deal with if the document was also available in Greek (and constructed with Roman legal concepts or formulae), or only constructed authorities, where the object was to gain an advantage in pre-court negotiations attaining the high ground with respect to the legal opponent on the information slope. Even the scribes play an important role in her story as they have some legal expertise or are at least trusted by the partly illiterate parties. Thus, she can broaden the perspective,to see “l(fā)ocalized law” as an active and useful appropriation of different legal cultures for specific contexts that could be very different at other times and/or regions. This should certainly stimulate future studies in provincial or regional laws within different legal frames.21A different approach is taken by Amihay 2017 who sees his supposedly consistent “Essene Law” as a system separated from other systems, particularly contemporary Rabbinic laws - a reaction to the appropriation of the texts of the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls by Rabbinic scholars. However, he detects a struggle between “essentialism” and “formalism” in the extant regulations that hints at the difficult relations of the sectarians when distinguishing the divine and human spheres.

Such a use of Roman law with regional specifics can be seen in the lex rivi Hiberiensis, an inscription found at Agón, near Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza), in the Roman province Hispania Citerior, which Vanessa Einheuser has examined in her doctoral thesis.22Einheuser 2017. On the topic with focus on communication between center and periphery, see also Bannon 2017.Starting from a Roman-law perspective, she does, however,not stop after comparing the legal procedures laid down in this regulation, that organizes the irrigation arrangements of a “water-community,” with the extant Roman legal sources, but goes on to set the inscription into the socio-economic and administrative context where the specific topographical structures demanded not a pure distribution of water rights but a comprehensive regulation of how to preserve a stable water supply, and where the territorial administration via pagi affected the decision-making and punishment regulations. Furthermore, her close analysis of the oath - sprocedure in the second part of the book reveals to what extent both plaintiff and defendant were protected by law, and that enforcement of an oath, which could end the legal dispute at once but forced the party swearing to “l(fā)ose” his social face or even to commit perjury, was not the main aim of the extant regulations so much as reflecting the ongoing communication strategies of the parties involved, to attain the better legal position.

Parallel to research on the individuality of jurists,23See Baldus et al. 2012; also Frier 1985; Harries 2012; Stepan 2018.studies of legal structures as related to individual authors (and thus the systems they embody and respond to) are badly needed as they are highly relevant for a historical approach to law, especially its understanding and formation within Roman society. Particularly important and a desideratum is a comprehensive analysis of Livy. Writing in Augustan times but about the Roman Republic, this author can no longer be read as the ultimate scholar of the annalist tradition, upon whom one can rely and trust; instead, the influence of his own times and position must be taken into account before reaching any judgments - let alone before citing him as a source and extrapolating legal norms from that. Recent studies have taken account of discourse analysis and studies of cultural memory, highlighting the complex interaction between the author's own life-time - the formation of an imperial rule - and his narrative about the alleged origins of the imperial res publica in regal and republican history.However, this has been done largely from a politico-cultural perspective. Hitherto,however, neither public nor private law have received much attention, despite Livy's highly visible legal scope and language throughout the work.

In view of the philological, historical and legal skills that could be expected of a contemporary study of Livy, the monograph of J?rg Reimann is totally disappointing. He neither develops a methodological approach to examine the author nor attempts an accurate and comprehensive analysis of the specific passages. His work is thus not more than a collection of sources in ten sections,covering many legal topics that can be found in Livy, merely rephrasing those sources. His explanations, usually bereft of suitable terminology,contextualization or relevant research literature, are insufficient; even basic works- for instance on the many statutes that reinforced and resolved the Struggle of the Orders or in respect of constitutional law - are not mentioned, beginning with Mommsen's Staatsrecht. The book offers nothing of or for in-depth research, and cannot be recommended.

The series Ius Romanum. Beitr?ge zur Methode und Geschichte des r?mischen Rechts (Ius Romanum. Contributions to Methods and History of Roman Law) has already brought out six volumes, all of which treat special legal questions, and offer further insights into the relations of law and society.

From the viewpoint of an entanglement of religious and civil law, Anna Margarete Seelentag carefully examines the adrogatio-procedure, one form of adoption in Roman law, whereby the adopted person was already sui iuris,so that the adrogatio had to be approved by both the pontiffs and, effectively in legal terms, the people's assembly, through the comitia curiata.24Seelentag 2014.She convincingly argues that, firstly, our modern differentiation between legal spheres- for instance, public, private, and religious law - resulting from attempts to a-historically and a-socially systematize Roman law over the course of history and expansion of the Roman Empire, did not exist in the Early and Middle Roman Republic. So, it is better to speak of order and rules that structured the behavior of citizens in a face-to-face society, for instance, when the transfer of a free person to a new family (later classi fied as a “private” act) involved not only the interests of the specific family, above all those of aristocratic families, but also had potential effects on the (aristocratically shaped) society as a whole, with respect to religious obligations (sacra), property, and political influence, among other details of social importance.

Yet in the Late Roman Republic, this subtle and complex balancing act of negotiations ceased to function, prominently in the case of the adrogatio of Clodius by an even younger client, so that the former could become a plebeian.This breach of traditional rules is reflected in attempts to enforce the old norms by legally non-binding pontific responses as well as a gradual transformation of those consensual rules into institutionalized law, whereby step-by-step the latter became an issue of private instead of public law, with complicated regulations in case of socially and religiously inadmissible but nevertheless legally effective adrogationes. That, in the end, the emperor had recourse to this still “public”adrogatio-procedure to grant exemptions further underscores the constitutional change from Republic to Principate where the emperor became a legal innovator where necessary, while civil law often remained fossilized in a conservative way.

Susanne L?sch investigates the coniunctio in testamentary law, particularly in questions of accretion, and can show how what was initially a strictly grammatical and formal understanding of when and how a “conjunction” of heirs or legatees comes into being, gradually changed into a more contextual and content-based interpretation among the jurists.25L?sch 2014.For historians, her observations are not so important concerning the very specific context of the juristic discussion, but are significant with regard to changes in that formalism often thought to be the prime characteristic of Roman law, religion, administration, etc.The consequences of such changes for our view of the functioning of the Roman Empire require further examination.

In a detailed analysis, Andreas Groten examines the topic of corporate law.26Groten 2015.He rightly observes that the legal conceptions of corpus and universitas developed with the political, economic, social and cultural-philosophical changes in Roman society in the transition from Republic to Empire. Thereby,the originally public term universitas was initially extended to all corporations in the Later Roman Empire. Yet, the term corpus underwent several conceptual changes: at first, philosophically un-reflected, it was used for the public commonwealth and, in analogy, applied to private corporations, to include them in legal relations. Then, under Stoic influence, it was framed by ontological ideas of the specific body-concept. Aristotelian skepticism challenged that view, and hence corpus had to be de fined by, and filled with, rights, opening the path to a variability of terms, inter alia the common term collegia, and legal discussion about them, in the course of the Late Roman Republic and Roman Empire. This positively legal view did, however, not survive the Justinian codification where the ontological unity of corpus was stressed again, and even economic corporations could now be seen as a universitas. Thus, this study clearly shows that one cannot separate public and private spheres, and has rather to study the entanglement of both, for instance, to understand the problems early Christianity had to face from Roman authorities, or for economically acting business corporations and their reliabilities.

The collected papers of a conference on the maligned interpolation-critique as an emerging and widely used and discussed method at the end of the nineteenth century shed light on just how intertwined linguistic, philological, historical and legal readings of a juristic text are.27Avenarius et al. 2018. On another main figure, Paul Koschaker who shaped the Romanistic approach, particularly systematic and comparative analysis, see Beggio 2018.Beginning with one of the “founding fathers,” Otto Gradenwitz, the development, spread and critical evolution or denunciation of this method to extract later additions from the legal texts of classical jurists, mainly in the Justinian Digests, are assessed by studying often unpublished material. In their work - among other sources -, the authors have used the archive of Salvatore Riccobono who had studied with Gradenwitz,and modified his method. Particularly important is the inconclusive discussion of whether Gradenwitz had already developed the rudiments of the idea of textual steps, and how the interpolation-method prevented, but on the other hand also prepared, the recognition of the individuality of jurists. This study of individuality is a new approach, possibly revealing how we can better understand the interdependencies linking the worlds of the jurists working in their own political, socio-economic and cultural environments on the one hand, and the historical (i.e. temporal) development of legal ideas and maxims on the other.28See Baldus et al. 2012. See also now Stepan 2018 who shows by a meticulous analysis of language,style and structure to what extent the 2nd/3rd century AD jurisprudent Claudius Tryphoninus might have been influenced by his supposed teacher Q. Cervidius Scaevola.

A similar tendency, i.e., demolishing the still wide-spread image of a uniform,consistent and constant system of Roman law, is pursued in the dissertation by Adolfo Wegmann Stockebrand who convincingly argues against a full set of real contracts.29Wegmann Stockebrand 2017.Instead, he perceives only credit (mutuum) as the one and only obligatio re contracta to which other forms such as loan, deposit et alia were gradually assimilated. They had their origin, however, not in a strictly legal contractual obligation with an obligation to refund the credited res. The historical importance of this study - despite the notion of the problems the systematizing Pandectist-approach of the 19th century has caused - in respect of topics like“trust” ( fides) and credit money circulation among the elite of the Roman world has to be further explored.

With the new interest in ancient economies,30legal institutions, their frames as well as their interconnections with economic actors and socio-political conditions have also come into the focus of research. Besides the short articles in the Oxford Handbook of Roman Law and Society, the comprehensive overview of legal institutes and instruments by Boudewijn Sirks is of particular importance.31Sirks 2018b.While rightly refuting an ancient concept of “commercial law,” he systematically presents the different legal spheres in which Romans and non-Romans alike interacted within the bounds of the imperium Romanum, and treats the different jurisdictional procedures as well as the legal devices such as contract-forms.Beyond that, he shows that real capital and credit money were at least both conceptualized, and structured, by law and legal practice, although the extent of credit money and the effects on the economy are still disputed. The extensive bibliography will surely serve as starting point for any further study in this still not fully explored field.

In the same volume, Elio Lo Cascio views the state as an institution forming and guaranteeing institutional structures for economic transactions.32Lo Cascio 2018; see also 2017, 44-66.In his opinion, the state aimed mainly at ensuring a “fair” market price, and to protect producers, sellers and consumers by adjusting the “rules of the game” when necessary, for instance, in times of supply-shortage. And his view is that even in Late Antiquity, the maximum price regulations were intended to keep market transactions in order. However, one can also observe that the local and regional demand of goods, persons and services played a particular role in these imperial interventions, as Peter Eich has recently, and convincingly, shown.33Eich 2017.The aims of imperial economic policies are thus still under review.

However, particularly the recent interest in, and appreciation of, the close entanglement of politics, policies, economy and law raises the present author's hope that such interconnections will be commonly studied in the future, in all fields in, and around, the sciences of Antiquity or Altertumswissenschaften.

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