Ancient Rome Laws

The Twelve Tables of Laws were an important step in the creation of a code of law that could be understood by all and applicable to all citizens. It provided the basis and principles for many of the laws in use today. Other collections of laws include the 3rd century Codex Gregorianus (exhibited around 292 AD) and the Codex Hermogenianus (exhibited in 295 AD), both named after prominent jurists during the reign of Diocletian and comprising a total of more than 2,500 texts. There is also the Theodosian Code, a collection of more than 2,700 laws compiled in the 430s AD and completed in the following years, and finally the Codex Iustinianus (528-534 CE), which summarizes and expands the ancient codices. Slavery was common in ancient Rome. One became a slave by being captured in war, born to a slave mother or convicted of certain offenses. The masters had almost absolute power over their slaves during the republic, including the right to kill them. The masters were also able to free their slaves. When this happened, the slave automatically became a Roman citizen. As the Roman Republic became an empire, its rulers faced the growing challenge of governing an increasingly diverse and distant population. Legal questions and disputes arose not only between Roman citizens, but also with non-citizens who lived or traveled in their territories, to whom the ius civile did not apply. This led to the development of ius gentium (“law of nations”), which included how to divide the law that applied to all peoples and was based on the common principles and arguments that civilized societies and humanity share, and ius naturale (“natural law”), a category of laws based on the principles shared by all living beings.

Humans and animals (e.g. reproductive laws or physical defense against attacks). As the law became more complex, Roman rulers needed a larger group of legal authorities to bring order to the system of legal formulas and decisions. In the second half of the third century BC. J.-C., a new professional group of legally trained specialists, the jurists, has emerged to meet this demand. Lawyers were not involved in the administration of the law, but focused on interpreting and generating formal opinions about the law. It was the scientific works and writings of generations of great jurists that elevated Roman law to its peak during the first two and a half centuries of our era, called the classical period of Roman law. The Romans generally did not manipulate the customs and local laws of the peoples they conquered.

However, after centuries of Roman rule, Roman law began to apply to citizens and foreigners throughout the empire. Jus gentium (“law of nations”) included commercial laws, decisions of provincial governors and judges, and emperor edicts. The concept of a single law for all peoples became a reality in 212 AD, when Emperor Caracalla extended Roman citizenship to almost all free inhabitants of the empire. Since the rulers of the Byzantine Empire were predominantly Hellenic and the percentage of the Hellenic population decreased as the empire`s borders became smaller and smaller, Western Europeans often called it a Greek empire inhabited by Greeks as early as the 6th century.[x] For the early Byzantines themselves, terms like “Greeks” and “Hellenes” were considered offensive until about the 11th century, as they downplayed their Roman nature and, moreover, associated them with the ancient pagan Greeks rather than the new Christian Romans. [131] Westerners were unaware of Roman Byzantium; If one did not want to move away from the Eastern Empire, the term Roma was often used to refer to the soldiers and subjects of the eastern emperors. [106] 6 to 8. In the nineteenth century, Western authors sometimes used terms such as res publica or sancta res publica to refer to the Byzantine Empire and still identified it with the ancient Roman Republic. As Christianity gradually became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire in late antiquity and eventually became the only legal faith, the Christianized Roman aristocracy had to redefine its Roman identity in Christian terms.

The rise of Christianity did not go unnoticed or unchallenged by conservative elements of the pagan Roman elite, who realized that power eluded them. Many of them, under pressure from increasingly anti-pagan and militant Christians, turned to the emphasis that they were the only “true Romans” when they preserved traditional Roman religion and literary culture. [77] According to the Roman statesman and orator Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 345-402), the true Romans were those who followed the traditional Roman way of life, including their ancient religions, and it was membership in these religions that would ultimately protect the empire from its enemies, as in previous centuries. According to Symmachos and his followers, French Switzerland had nothing to do with Christianity, but depended on Rome`s pagan past and its status as the heart of a vast polytheistic empire. [78] Symmachus` ideas were not popular with Christians. Some Church leaders, such as Ambrose, the Archbishop of Mediolanum, launched formal and vicious attacks on paganism and the members of the elite who defended it. Like Symmachus, Ambrose saw Rome as the largest city in the Roman Empire, but not because of its pagan past, but because of its Christian present. During Late Antiquity, the Roman period was increasingly determined by the Christian faith, which would eventually become the norm. [79] The status of Christianity was greatly increased by the adoption of the religion by the Roman emperors. [80] Throughout Late Antiquity, emperors and their courts were considered the Romans par excellence.

[81] The practical application of Roman law and the era of the European common Ius ended with national codifications. In 1804, the French Civil Code came into force. During the 19th century, many European states adopted the French model or devised their own codes. In Germany, the political situation has made it impossible to create a code of national law. From the 17th century, Roman law in Germany was strongly influenced by domestic (customary) law and was called usus modernus Pandectarum. In some parts of Germany, Roman law was in force until the Entry into Force of the Civil Code (BGB) in 1900. [10] In the Republic, the emphasis was more on the adaptation of existing laws by judges (ius honorarium) than on the creation of completely new laws. This happened especially in the annual lender`s edict (codified from 131 AD), when the types of permissible cases, defenses and exceptions were described and an evaluation of the previous year`s legal policy was made, making all the necessary legal changes accordingly.