The archaic period

The earliest Rome was an agricultural community which differed little in its social and political organisation from its neighbours in central Italy. The mass of the population was composed of small freeholders and economic life was based largely on cattle-raising and the cultivation of the land.

Political power was in the hands of a landowning aristocracy, the patricians, which dominated the most important political body, the senate, out of which the highest magistrates of the state were chosen. Social life revolved around the family (famHid), the basic social unit, whose head {pater familias) had absolute authority over all persons and all property in his family group. A turning-point in the history of this period was the overthrow of the Monarchy, Rome's earliest system of government, at the close of the sixth century BC and the establishment of an aristocratic Republic. During the period from the sixth to the mid-third centuries BC Rome's social and political organisation underwent a series of important changes - a process marked by the 'struggle of the orders', the internal political strife between the old aristocracy, the patricians, and the lower classes, the plebeians. By the middle of the third century BC a precarious equilibrium between the classes had been established and the Roman state came to be dominated by a new nobility composed of both patrician and wealthy plebeian families.

During the earlier phase of the archaic period Roman society was governed by a body of customary norms of a largely religious nature. There appear to have been no written laws, although the jurist Pomponius, who lived in the second century AD, does allude to certain leges regiae (laws of the kings) in his description of the state of the law during this period. In the archaic era the formulation and articulation of the law was in the hands of the priestly class, the pontifices. In their capacity as custodians of religious law (ius divinum) the pontiffs were concerned with, among other things, the punishment of violations of religious norms and the regulation of the calendar; at the same time they supervised the application of private law (ius civile).

They alone were acquainted with the technical forms employed in the making of the typical transactions of private law, and they alone were entitled to give official advice and authoritative opinions on questions of law. Like the law of other primitive societies, the Roman law of the archaic period was characterised by its extremely formalistic nature. A legal transaction or procedure could not produce the desired results unless it was performed in accordance with strictly prescribed rituals. And once the prescribed ritual had been observed, the transaction was regarded as binding irrespective of the parties' real intentions. A momentous event that marks the development of Roman law during this period was the codification of the customary norms that governed the life of the Roman citizens by the Law of the Twelve Tables, enacted around 450 BC. With the introduction of this law, the first binding written record of the rules and procedures by which justice might be done, a new source of law came into existence, in addition to the unwritten customary law. In the years that followed the promulgation of the Law of the Twelve Tables legal development was based largely on the interpretation of its text, a task carried out by the pontiffs and, in later ages, by the jurisconsults. Moreover, in this period the office of praetor was introduced (367 BC), a new magistracy entrusted with the administration of the private law. In the course of time the praetor's edict became one of the strongest formative forces in the development of Roman civil law and provided the basis for a distinct source of law known as ius praetorium or ius honorarium.

<< | >>

↑

Source: Mousourakis George. The Historical and Institutional Context of Roman Law. Routledge,2003. — 480 p.. 2003

The archaic period

More on the topic The archaic period: