As a large city and the heart of an empire, Rome was full of courts.
These had an impact not only on individuals involved in the litigation but also on the physical environment of the city, since much of this activity was located in central public areas.
During Rome's normal business days any given number of these courts would be in session, thereby impinging on the daily life of this busy city's inhabitants; the fora would be crowded with judges, advocates, and litigants from the city, Italy, or beyond, impeding, if not outright thwartĀing, movement through the public places of Rome and filling these areas with noise and distractions.Here was an opportunity, scarcely avoidable, to see the legal system at work. The ideological importance of such visibility should not be underrated. In a society without mass information systems, public displays of diverse types (e.g. entertainments, audiences, processions, artistic decorations) served as direct and indirect methods of communication between state and public, ruler and ruled. Intertwined as they were with public daily life, the courts spoke on many levels. The exposed machinery of The Law could bring comĀfort to the innocent that wrongs were righted, and fear to the criminal, actual or potential, that retribution would be swift and sure. By linking these ideas with the emperor, the courts served as evidence of the organized functioning of the state under his direction.
This chapter places the Roman courtroom within the known topography of imperial Rome. Those individuals having a jurisdiction, namely various magĀistrates and the emperor, provide the chapter's basic structure. Available evidence dictates that the emperor and the praetors with the most extensive jurisdictions of all magistrates, the praetor urbanus and praetor peregrinus, receive much attention. The quaestiones perpetuae (the standing courts presided over by the other praetors), the praefectus urbi, and the consuls can also be located, although the evidence is far scarcer. I also consider what evidence we have for the courts of other magistrates. Finally, I use a more chronological and spatial method to provide an overview of legal activities within Rome's topography.
The goal of this chapter is to gain insight into the physicality of the Roman courts and understand to what degree the courts were interwoven into the life of an average Roman. In addition, the discussion encourages an appreĀciation of the diverse forms legal activities could take. This chapter, then, identifies the stage parameters within which the participants, the subjects of the subsequent chapters, āperformedā.
More on the topic As a large city and the heart of an empire, Rome was full of courts.:
- The inhabitants of Rome lived with the reality of legal courts scattered throughout the public and private spaces of the city, and perhaps even came to resent, on occasion, the impact such courts made on traffic flow during the busy hours of the day.
- THE LOCATION OF LEGAL ACTIVITIES IN THE CITY OF ROME
- The West European feudal system that followed the collapse of the Carolingian empire - itself a short-lived attempt to impose order on the disorder resulting from the barbarian invasion that had destroyed Rome - was decentralized even by the standards of similar regimes elsewhere.
- As in other federations, health care is a central concern of intergovernmental relations in Australia, a very large item in government budgets, and a major service delivery responsibility of the states.
- A full specimen essay
- 2. Principles and full compliance
- Why not just read headnotes rather than full reports?
- City-states
- Courts of other magistrates
- Elite governance at the city level: the case of urban regimes
- The struggle against the Empire
- An overview of judges at Rome
- EFFECTS OF EMPIRE AT THE CENTRE: GENDER AND NATION
- GERMANY, BRITAIN AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE