Böcker av Jill Harries

This book is about the reinvention of the Roman Empire during the eighty years between the accession of Diocletian and the death of Julian.

This is the first systematic treatment in English by an historian of the nature, aims and efficacy of public law in late imperial Roman society from the third to the fifth century AD. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, and using the writings of lawyers and legal anthropologists, as well as those of historians, the book offers new interpretations of central questions: What was the law of late antiquity? How efficacious was late Roman law? What were contemporary attitudes to pain, and the function of punishment? Was the judicial system corrupt? How were disputes settled? Law is analysed as an evolving discipline, within a framework of principles by which even the emperor was bound. While law, through its language, was an expression of imperial power, it was also a means of communication between emperor and subject, and was used by citizens, poor as well as rich, to serve their own ends.

Traces Cicero's thought on law as an advocate; as the friend of jurists; as writer on the philosophy of the 'higher law'; and as a politician who both asserted and subverted the rights of citizens under the law. The Roman Republican jurists, hitherto largely neglected by historians, are placed in their intellectual, social and political context.