THE MURECINE ARCHIVE AS A WINDOW IN IURE

The foregoing is the briefest sketch of postponements iniure. In many respects it departs from the common opinion. The common opinion developed over a time when information on procedure was very poor.

The mischief is not confined to interpreting vadimonium documents wrongly.^[381] In a document of any character, an allusion to vadimonium will be an important point of reference in the chronology of events, and if the allusion is misunderstood as a private, pre-litigation event, the true chronology is lost. This is a great shame, because the Murecine archive promises to give us a good deal of new information about how business was conducted in iure, and this particular misunderstanding, in effect, puts this new information out of reach. The two examples given above, iusiurandum and datio cogni­toris, illustrate the problem: the appearance of the word “vadimonium” in the cited documents does not mark the iusiurandum as an extra-judicial iusiu- randum, or the cognitores as extra-judicial cognitores. These documents are describing events in iure.

In the case of the cognitores, the consequences of this misunderstanding are considerable. TPSulp 27 should not be cited as evidence of extra-judicial cognitores, but the problem is deeper than this. What is unique about the three documents in the case (TPSulp 2, 3, 27) is the fact that the parties did not simply decide to bring their case in Rome, but first brought their case locally, and then were ordered to Rome by the magistrate. No other collec­tion of documents shows this pattern of events in a single case, so far as I am aware. Now it is conceivable that the magistrate ordered the transfer at the wishes of the parties, but it is equally possible - and perhaps likely - that he did so after an examination of the case. The reason is simply that defendants do not usually relish being sent to defend in distant forums, nor should they be sent there on a whim. Transfers of this kind often took place when a case exceeded the local jurisdictional limit,^[382] and that may well have been the situation here.^[383] Hence in these three documents we may have an example of something common in practice, but otherwise unattested: a case brought locally which, on the examination of the magistrate, belonged in Rome.^{[384] [385] And the documents may be more useful still, on the subject of cognitores. Gaius' second, more general formula for the appointment of cognitores, a formula which omits to name the specific action,[386] would be suitable for this kind of case, where the local magistrate cannot confidently anticipate the specific action the praetor would be willing to grant.}

Whatever the truth, the documents provide a rare and fascinating view into events in iure.