This chapter addresses the spirit, style, and character of the Roman jurists, the true architects of the Roman legal system.

They formed a distinct group within Roman society, and their existence constituted a phenomenon specific to Roman culture. The original Roman jurists were priests. In the third century BCE, however, they began to develop a secular jurisprudence.

Unlike the Greeks, Roman jurists spent little time on philosophical abstractions. They were primarily concerned with finding fair solutions in individual cases. Their interest in philosophical issues was peripheral. They did not develop a general theory of justice, law, the state, or political admin­istration. They simply accommodated Greek philosophy when necessary for their legal purposes. Roman jurists were concerned with the daily practice of law, probably because most of them were public men involved in politics and interested in legal issues (without any remuneration) only as a part of their political careers. The development of legal science was a matter of disputation over interpretations of law. In this process, there emerged two groups, or schools, of jurists, the Sabinians and the Proculians, following different legal formulations, techniques, and methods.

The history of Roman legal science is inherently linked to the history of Rome. During the Republic and the early Principate, the number of jurists was small. They usually came from senatorial families. Legal education and expertise often remained within particular families (as with, for example, Mucius Scaevola, Labeo, Neratius Pricus, and Celsus). The Principate favored jurists as a group. Augustus tried to make some opinions more authoritative than others and granted some jurists the privilege to hand down opinions publicly, based on the emperor’s authority (ius respondendi). The development of the ius respondendi is still unclear.

The jurists and the legal science 63 citizenship to all inhabitants of the empire by Caracalla in 212 demanded new legal developments and opened the door to the last generation of classical jurists, many of them of provincial origin.

The best source of knowledge about Roman jurisprudence is the Digest of Justinian, a compilation of excerpts from the works of Roman jurists. The account of the history of Roman jurisprudence given by Pomponius in some surviving fragments of his textbook (D. 1.2.2) provides important information about the early periods. Literary sources, especially the writings of Cicero, offer abundant material, too, about the work of jurists at the end of the Roman Republic.

Cicero classified his work as falling outside the field of jurisprudence (Brutus 41.151; Pro Murena 13, 29-30; De oratore 41.141), although in his youth he received legal instruction from Quintus Mucius Scaevola Augur (159-88 bce) and Quintus Mucius Scaevola Pontifex (died 82 bce). Cicero was not a jurist in the strict sense but a successful advocate and a legal orator, as well as a statesman, a philosopher, and a writer. Legal oratory and advocacy demanded some knowledge of public and private law but not the legal expertise required to become a true jurist. The jurist Servius Sulpicius Rufus, Cicero’s friend, was an orator before becoming a jurist. For orators, the law was the subject matter of their speeches but not the purpose of their profession.