Legitimacy and Law in the Roman World: Tabulae in Roman Belief and Practice

by Elizabeth A. Meyer

Overview

The Romans wrote solemn religious, public, and legal documents on wooden tablets often coated with wax. This book investigates the historical significance of this resonant form of writing and its power to make documents efficacious. It traces its role in court, its spread to the provinces (an aspect of Romanization) and its influence on the evolution of Roman law. Elizabeth Meyer reveals how Roman legal documents on tablets are the ancestors of today's dispositive legal documents—the document as the act itself. In a world where knowledge of Roman law was scarce (and enforcers scarcer), Roman law drew its authority from a wider world of belief.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521068918
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/10/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	372
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth A. Meyer is Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia and has published articles on Roman history and epigraphy in several major journals.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction; Part I. The World of Belief: 1. The use and value of Greek legal documents; 2. Roman perceptions of Roman tablets: aspects and associations; 3. The Roman tablet: style and language; 4. Recitation from tablets; 5. Tablets and efficacy; Part II. The Evolution of Practice: 6. Roman tablets in Italy (AD 15–79); 7. Roman tablets and related forms in the Roman provinces (30 BC–AD 260); 8. Tablets and other documents in court to AD 400; 9. Documents, jurists, the emperor, and the law (AD 200–AD 535); Conclusion; References; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Elizabeth Meyer has given us a fine introduction to the function of tablets in Roman society. Her book is wide ranging and, in fact, its greatest strength is its multiple perspectives." New England Classical Journal, Cynthia Bannon, Indiana University at Bloomington

From the Publisher