INTRODUCTION

(i)

The jurisprudence of the Principate (i.e. from Augustus to Diocletian) has, since the nineteenth century, been called ‘classical jurisprudence’.^{[168] [169] The name should be retained, for it hits the mark: the jurisprudence of this period is classical in both senses of the term.[170]}

i.

2. The jurisprudence of this period is classical also in the sense that it became the model and pattem, the μέτρον καί κανών, of later generations. What happened in general literature² happened in jurisprudence: in the post-classical period a select band of authors came to be set apart and to be regarded as κεκριμένοι, as ‘classics’.³ Modem jurisprudence, beginning with Imerius, had no choice but to adopt as ‘classics’ the jurists of the Principate, since their republican forerunners had left no monuments.

(ü)

Within the classical period two phases can be distinguished, the line of division being the accession of Hadrian. The Principate is a period of long-drawn-out and ever-increasing bureaucratization of public administration.⁶ This movement could not leave jurisprudence unaffected. The tendency of every bureaucracy is to concentrate a monopoly of the development of the law in a government office, to codify the law and to control its application and execution in detail. In promoting bureaucratization on Hellenistic lines Julius Caesar acted with the lightning rapidity which he displayed on his travels ;⁷ Augustus preferred the more leisurely tempo of his own movements,⁸ his motto in this as in

¹ See texts in Bremer, ii. 2. 505.

² Kroehnert, Canonesne poetarum, scriptorum, artificum per antiquitatem fuerint? (Konigsberg) phil. diss. 1891; Pollux, Onomasticon (ed. Bekker, 1846), 9. 15: Ïàðà δί βουκιδίδπ μάνφ των κίκριμίνων. Similarly Onomast. 9. 153- θ^η the canon of the New Testament see Hamack, Die Entstehung des Neuen Testaments (1914), Engl. ed. by Wilkinson, The Origin of the New Testament (1925).

³Below, pp. 278, 281, 283.

⁴ Savigny, Vom Beruf, 35; Rudorff, Rom. RG. ³ (1857), 364; Allen, Law in the Making (1939), 234 ff.

⁵ R. Sohin, Grünhuts Z.f.

⁶ There is still no comprehensive work on the development of the Roman bureau­cracy. Mattingly, The Imperial Civil Service of Rome (1910), deals only with selected questions and is a little out of date.

⁷ Sueton. Caes. 57: ‘longissimas vias incredibili celeritate confecit.’

⁸ Id. Aug. 82: ‘itinera... lenta ac minuta faciebat, ut Praeneste vel Tibur biduo procederet.’ other matters being festina lente. Tiberius, as usual, stuck to Augustus’ method.¹ It was left to Hadrian to take decisive action by codifying the Edict, to make a practice of employing the leading jurists as members of his consilium, and to provide for the more thorough legal training of future officials.² But republican forms were still preserved. Septimius Severus took some further steps forward,³ but not till Diocletian’s monarchy brought the whole republican facade tumbling down was the victory of bureaucracy complete. That victory spelt the doom of the old aristocratic jurisprudence.

¹ For the period Augustus-Nero (inclus.) see Sherwin-White, ‘Procurator Augusti’, Papers of the British School of Rome, xv (1939), n-26.

² Pringsheim, ‘ The legal policy and reforms of Hadrian ’, J RS xxiv (1934), 144 ff.

³ Mason Hammond, * Septimius Severus, Roman bureaucrat ’, Harv. St. in Class. Phil, li (1940), 137.