Spaces of Justice in the Roman World collects twelve papers first given at a conference at Columbia's Center for the Ancient Mediterranean in 2007. The contributors, mostly not the usual suspects in Roman law, bring expertise from various areas of Classical Studies (archaeology, art history, literature, history) — and their perspectives enhance our understanding of the Roman legal system, how trials were conducted and what they meant to litigants, observers, and the authorities.
The papers in Spaces consider Roman law in its physical environments, taking a cue from spatial studies, which interrogate power relationships inherent and expressed in landscape, often applying new technological tools to old problems, for example, using GPS to reconstruct historical landscapes. Though these papers deploy familiar technologies (e.g. archaeological excavation, literary analysis), they open new perspectives on Roman law by ‘examining how authority and power relationships manifest themselves in space, both shaping it — ideally and concretely — and being shaped by it’ (4–5), as Francesco de Angelis writes in the introduction.
Each paper in Spaces stands alone but, read together, they expand our view of the Roman legal system, from prisons to palaces, from the hurly-burly of trials in the republican forum to hearings held in imperial offices and gardens. Key themes include permeability and flexibility, practicalities and logistics, the impact of imperial administration on the legal system, and the interface between entertainment and authority. The papers are arranged spatially progressing from face-to-face interaction between litigants, to action in the courtroom, to public spaces in Rome, to cities across the Roman Empire. My remarks do not follow this order but draw attention to interesting intersections that are not, unfortunately, addressed in the papers but should have stimulated lively discussion at the conference.
Three papers focus on the stages of the legal process. Kaius Tuori identifies the places where the jurists worked in their different rôles, e.g. as advisor to litigants or as a member of the emperor's consilium. Ernest Metzger analyses the Herculaneum tablets to revise the first or in iure stage of civil procedure. Traditionally in iure was interpreted as a hearing before the praetor, but Metzger argues for a metaphorical meaning that included pre-trial negotiation between the litigants. Richard Neudecker also mines Herculaneum tablets to reanimate legal procedures, mapping the places in the Forum of Augustus where litigants met after a promise of bond (vadimonium). His discussion reveals the volume of legal business and the logistical problems that beset litigants as they tried to make the system work.
The crowded public spaces where legal hearings were held in Rome are the focus of two papers. Leanne Bablitz reconstructs the centumviral court, its four panels of forty-five jurors seated on tiered seats, all inside the Basilica Julia, and observed by spectators in second floor galleries and on the ground floor who moved from one trial to another or were drawn from the forum by lively oratorical performance. Eric Kondratieff establishes that the praetor's tribunal was a simple, portable structure that made access to law public and flexible. The praetor's authority was empowered by the symbolic topography surrounding his tribunal, much as the legal proceedings, analysed by Neudecker, were legitimized by association with the statuary programme of the Forum of Augustus. In the imperial period trials were moved indoors, and this change of venue affected the quality of justice. Bruce Frier considers the impact on the legal system itself, arguing from a close reading of Tacitus, Dialogus 39.1–4, that the authority of law increased as it was physically removed and thus recognized as separate from other aspects of public life. Marco Maiuro assesses how public spaces were adapted to accommodate administrative, judicial, and economic functions of the imperial administration. Also with attention to topography, Livia Capponi explains the development of specialized buildings for legal hearings and archives in Roman Egypt, with a focus on Hadrian's construction of praetoria (fortified buildings that reminded this reviewer of court houses equipped with metal detectors in the United States). Despite changes in the setting of trials, no simple contrast between republican and imperial, public and private accounts for the ideological value of the venue, as de Angelis argues. Even in the emperor's garden a defendant might get a fair hearing, while the spectacle of a trial in the theatre, though public, could yield something other than justice.
The permutations of place are also a theme in the three papers on fictional trials that round out the volume. John Bodel finds that the trial scenes in Petronius and Apuleius are characterized by dislocation and confusion as inept litigants flounder, both literally and figuratively, on their misguided voyages to justice. Saundra Schwartz, using Bakhtin's notion of the chronotope, shows how trial scenes in Greek novels represent allegorically the differential power relations between Roman rulers and provincial élites. In the acts of the Christian martyrs, discussed by Jean-Jacques Aubert, legal proceedings are set in a range of places throughout the Roman Empire. Like the novels, these Christian accounts mix parody and realism, manipulating our perceptions of law so as to undermine the ideology of imperial justice and at the same time redefine its authority.
Spaces is, appropriately, an attractive volume, with generous layout of text on the page. A set of common plans for the key places in Rome, collected in an appendix, would have be useful. The back matter — thirty-four pages of comprehensive bibliography and four indices (sources, names, places, subjects) — is especially welcome in a collected volume that anticipates as wide an audience as Spaces no doubt will draw.
