Re-drawing the Map? or as to procedures adopted in attested cases. In many areas the closest we can
get is by reading between the lines of narrative sources, or of forensic ora-
tions citing precedents, which themselves may have been written long after
the episodes which they claim to report. The same is, of course, true of the
constitutional and juridical structure within which, and by which, the law
which then applied to Romans was enforced. The ‘‘early Roman Republic’’
which we can encounter is above all that which is set out for us in the pages
of Livy, writing under Augustus. If we want to write the history of the Ro-
man constitution and of Roman law, starting in the archaic period and going
forward, we can do so (or attempt to do so) only by following the lines of
retrospective reconstructions written much later in antiquity.
Any serious approach to ahistoricalreconstruction of ‘‘Roman law’’—of
the law as it was actually applied to individuals—can only come when we
reach the first period when there is a significant volume of contemporary
literary (and some documentary) evidence, namely the first century..But
we will only begin to grasp the historical reality of jurisdictional practice,
and the legal procedures and principles actually applied in deciding cases,
when we reach the first century.., with papyri from Roman Egypt on the
one hand and the Herculaneum tablets and related documents on the other.^17
From then on documentary evidence is available, if of course extremely
erratic in coverage; and we can also derive from the legal sources themselves
concrete examples of datable cases in which Roman law was applied. This
comes in two forms. Firstly, there is the quotation by Gaius, and by the jurists
of whom extracts are assembled in theDigest(and other minor collections
of juristic writings), of responses and rulings by emperors, all now laid out
in chronological order in the priceless and rather neglected work of G. Gua-
landi.^18 Secondly, and even more neglected from the point of view of their
legal content, there is the collection of imperial legal rulings, embodied in
replies directed either to office-holders giving jurisdiction, or to interested
private parties themselves, which is to be found in the third of the legal works
compiled on the orders of Justinian, theCodex Justinianus. These begin, in
chronological terms, with a ruling by Hadrian (..–) to the effect that
. While there is of course much to be learnt still from the classic study of J. A. Crook,
Lawand Life of Rome(), it is with the publication of reliable editions of a large number
of tablets of the first century..from Pompeii and Herculaneum that for the first time
(in both senses) we can observe ‘‘Roman law’’ in operation in ordinary life. See above all
G. Camodeca,Tabulae Pompeianae Sulpiciorum(), and the review article by G. Rowe,
‘‘Trimalchio’s World,’’SCI (): , and now E. Metzger,Litigation in Roman Law
(), also using contemporary documents.
. G. Gualandi,Legislazione imperiale e giurisprudenzaI–II ().