Empire cannot overlook the advantages of the existence of a legal framework to imperial rule, which the Hellenistic kingdoms had lacked, and which
offered the Empire's subjects at least the theoretical possibility of redress and restrained the arbitrariness of Rome's rule. Law too grew at Rome with the
problems first of city and then of Empire, and legal expertise came to provide an entry to the governing class. Professional legal practice was eventually
one of the activities which gave many provincials a place in government, and Roman law was one of the most tenacious legacies of imperial rule-its
greatest codification was the product of the eastern Empire under Justinian. There is not space here to recount the gradual evolution of Roman law, but the
long accumulation of legal interpretations and precedents in the annual edicts of the praetors, which, when codified by Hadrian, formed the foundation of
the legal system, and the role of the Emperor as a source of law and patron of the great jurists of the late second and early third centuries need stressing.
For our purposes, however, two connected things are important. First, at Rome there was no question of the separation of judiciary and legislature which is
so important a liberal principle to modern political thinkers.
The law at Rome was on the whole the creation of judges, not lawgivers. The second point follows from this: legal measures show the same variety,
casualness, and lack of generality which we find in Roman administrative decisions, and indeed it is difficult to separate the two. There is no proper
ancient equivalent of statute law. The result was that the law was not always sufficiently universal, and the underprivileged might well not reap its
benefits. Jewish nationalist writers, for example, compare the hypocrisy of Rome to the ambiguous associations of the unclean pig: 'Just as a pig lies down
and sticks out its trotters as though to say "I am clean" [because they are cloven], so the evil empire robs and oppresses while pretending to execute justice.'
For the burdens of Roman rule on the Empire were heavy and hated, and much of Roman government was devoted to ensuring their efficacy. The
collection of tribute, direct and indirect tax, rents, levies in kind, recruits, protection money, requisitioning, and so on in total amounted to a very heavy
oppression, even if the amount of tax formally due was not by comparative standards very high. Roman officials from the highest to the most menial were
involved with these matters, and finance was a serious administrative concern. Augustus' great catalogue of his achievements is called in full Res Gestae et
Impensae ('His Deeds and Expenditure'). And this is undoubtedly the view that most provincials had of the way the Empire worked. A prophecy of Rome's
fall concentrated on both the exactions of the ruling power and the-less often discussed but equally odious-drain of manpower to Italy via the slave trade:
'the wealth that Rome has received from tributary Asia threefold shall Asia receive again from Rome, which will pay in full the price of its insolent pride.
And for each of those who labour in the land of the Italians twenty Italians shall toil in Asia as needy slaves', (Oracula Sibyllina 3. 350 f). Given this
hostility to the harsh realities of the Empire, and given the amateur nature of Roman government, how was stability achieved?
Communications have been described as the nervous system of the body politic. Compared with what had gone before and what followed the rule of
Rome, the frequency of movement and the security of roads and harbours was most impressive (though banditry never completely disappeared even from
Italy). The imperial posting system, a creation of Augustus refined over the following centuries, became so huge, authoritative, and elaborate that it
represented one of the heaviest burdens on the provincials whose food, animals, and dwellings were constantly being requisitioned for passing officials, as
inscriptions from a wide range of places and times bear eloquent witness. But there can be no doubt that the roads and harbours of the Empire were one of
the most necessary organs of Roman rule.