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appendix b Representativeness of Compilation h my compilation of laws is not all-inclusive in that it does not represent the entire body of public law proposals ever considered in ancient Rome. Rather, it consists of the body of proposals of law and enacted laws available at the time of my research. How many laws were lost over the years or went unrecorded is unknown; clearly some did, as the isolation of epigraphically attested laws reveals. Those laws that we have a record of, thanks in large measure to the narrations of ancient authors, are the surviving laws from a larger body of public laws, recorded because of a conscious process of selection based on criteria that have long been forgotten. There are basically two kinds of errors that can creep into studies based on a number of items drawn from what is obviously a larger body of the particular items: sampling errors, or errors caused by some biased method of collecting the test items; and non–sampling errors, which in the case of my study would mean errors of reportage. In regard to sampling errors, my compilation is not strictly speaking based on a sample in any modern statistical sense. Furthermore , the findings of my study depend not on statistical tests that assume a random sample but on patterns that can be drawn from the accumulation of all extant public laws at particular times and on historical “snapshots” of the lawmaking process at crucial times. 445 446 representatives of compilation More challenging to the integrity of my compilation is the second kind of possible error, namely, non–sampling error, especially in regard to potential bias in the recording of the reported public law proposals and enacted laws. It is clear that the present availability of recorded proposals of law and enacted laws was determined to a significant degree by reportage, specifically by the interests of selected prominent Roman authors. Arguably, therefore, the patterns discernible in lawmaking activity reflect changes in the volume of existing information about different periods of Roman history. There is especially more information about lawmaking activity over the years from 80 to 43, when the most prolific of ancient authors, Cicero (106–43), was an active participant in events and a commentator on the political life of Rome. Consequently, it might be said that the trends exhibited by our recorded laws and proposals for these years do not accurately represent public lawmaking activity in Rome over the period but the biases of Cicero. In particular it may be objected that the weight of the testimony produced by Cicero, one among many ancient recorders of law, has probably skewed the picture of lawmaking activity we have by exaggerating the amount of such activity between 80 and 43. To what extent can we measure the impact of reportage on our compilation? To what extent do the frequency and subject matter of public lawmaking assemblies in different periods of Roman history reflect the degree to which ancient authors chose to emphasize a particular law or type of law in describing a particular period? To test the impact of ancient reportage I examined my overall compilation in light of the contribution of ancient authors. The numbers of laws reported by six of the most important, including the four most prolific, ancient recorders of lawmaking activity—Cicero, Livy, Cassius Dio, Appian, Plutarch, and Polybius , in order of volume of reportage—organized by quarter century divisions, are shown in table B.1. Overall these six authors account for 359 of all recorded laws between 300 and 25, more than three out of four laws from our compilation for the period (columns 7 and 8, table B.1). As to individual patterns, Cicero alone is responsible for recording 210, nearly 45 percent of all laws for the period of which we are aware. Despite considerable gaps in the more than 100 books in which he wrote his history of Rome, ab urbe condita, Livy is second at 139, or almost 30 percent, of all recorded laws. Next in order of volume come Cassius Dio with 104 (22 percent), followed by Appian at 80 (17 percent ), Plutarch at 79 (almost 17 percent), and Polybius at a distance with a mere 10, or 2 percent of all recorded laws (table B.1). That there should be significant overlap between these authors is understandable : with the exception of Cicero all of them are derivative sources (and Cicero, too, is derivative when he informs us about long...

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