Lives behind the Laws: The World of the Codex Hermogenianus

1. Seeking Justice in the Roman World

16 One Seeking Justice in the Roman World In addition to costs, however, our respondents also acknowledged the significant consequences of players’ different levels of skill and experience . In other words, legality comes with costs that are differently burdensome, and thus legality is differentially available. “They called me and we went up, you know, to the table. And I don’t even know what the judge said, I couldn’t even understand what he was saying . And the lawyer told me, he said ‘okay,’ he said ‘that’s it, it’s all over.’ I was right there and I don’t know . . . I didn’t even know what he was talking about.” Ewic k a nd Sil bey, Common Pl ac e of Law Petition and response has been a feature of systems of justice in the West and Near East for thousands of years, indicating that it has fulfilled the needs of non-elites in search of justice. The Romans used it for understandable reasons. Their legal system was a complex mass of laws, procedures, and offices, so an individual with a legal problem stood little chance of taking an opponent to court, defending himself in court, or even finding out what to do about the problem on his own. Petition and response was not the only source of help, but as I shall show, it had advantages over the others. For the Roman with a legal problem, patrons were a good source of advice, especially for freedmen, not least because as former master the patron had experience of the legal process of manumission and therefore Seeking Justice in the Roman World · 17 might know some of the legal issues arising from it, such as inheritance and the status (and relationship to a master) of children born to a slave. To the freed or freeborn client, the patron was someone who was perhaps more worldly, certainly more wealthy and more influential. Even if he lacked expert knowledge of the laws and legal system, he probably had some experience of using the law or knew others who had, he had the money to help his client’s legal undertaking, and he enjoyed elevated status, which he could bring to bear on behalf of his client. As far back as the leges regiae, patrician patrons were obliged to explain to clients the laws of which they were ignorant, to bring a suit on their behalf when they were wronged over a contract, and to defend clients against those who brought charges. Indeed it has been suggested that the duty of a patron to his client was the basis for petition and response.1With the institution of the imperial office, emperors became the patrons of all the people, especially the plebs. Finding later evidence for the influence and advice of patrons, however, is extremely difficult (unless we assume that some of those who signed on behalf of an illiterate party in our extant legal documents were patrons).2And of course patrons could not be guaranteed to offer expert advice. Without the help of a patron, a Roman could ask a legal professional for legal information or advice. There was a range of such people to whom one could turn: advocates, jurists, and tabelliones, or notaries. Surprisingly, advocates were not the repository of legal information we might expect; many of them had only a shaky grasp of Roman law.3 Quintilian makes clear the unimportance of the law for their professional development. Toward the close of the Institutes, a training manual for orators, he recommends that the orator also (quoque) have knowledge of law; otherwise he will be embarrassed by his ignorance during debate with the opposing counsel.4Before the appearance of official late Roman legal compilations, advocates in training and in practice relied on handbooks and memory. As Jill Harries notes, “Many of the references to the past in late antique texts are in fact formulaic; lawyers knew, for example, the basics of the requirements of the lex Cincia on gift-giving, without having to go back to a text now some six hundred years old. . . . Nor could the texts themselves have remained immune from the ravages of the centuries, from emendation or copyists’ errors.”5 Though knowledgeable (or well equipped with handbooks), the advocates , with their elevated social status, may have been off-putting to many 18 · Lives behind the Laws seeking advice and help, and their fees were...