In this monograph, based on her 1999 PhD thesis, Judy E. Gaughan aims to re-interpret Republican Roman legal institutions that are commonly associated with murder from 753 to 81 b.c. and proposes a new interpretation of the relationship between homicide and power. G. argues that murder was not considered a crime because no law explicitly outlawed murder per se. The seven chapters are preceded by a list of abbreviations, while the endnotes, bibliography, and general index are provided at the end. Undergraduates, in particular, will appreciate the translation of all quotations in languages other than English.

In ch. 1 G. identifies the Lex Numae as a historical murder law in use during the Roman monarchical period. This law was then necessary, because, according to G., ‘the king's power, based on the sanction of the gods, required the king to control the spilling of blood’ (22). After the expulsion of the kings, as G. suggests in ch. 2, the power over life and death, vitae necisque potestas, was ‘granted to all male Roman citizens when they became patres’ (27). No murder law existed, therefore, because it ‘might have restricted […] the flexibility of this paternal right and in doing so could have jeopardized the stability of the republic’ (52). The remaining chapters of the book examine legislative means in connection with the prosecution and authorization of killings during the Roman Republic until 81 b.c. In ch. 3 G. argues that the high magistrate's right to kill through imperium was limited by the creation of provocatio, which again, according to G., produced a ‘tension’ that ‘remained a defining element of the power of these high magistrates throughout the republic’ (66). Further, as G. highlights, the XII Tables incorporated no murder law. In ch. 4 G. looks at various violent acts such as dagger wielding (72–6), poisoning (77–84), and parricide (84–8) that were actionable in a public venue. These, G. emphasizes, were not considered ‘crimes’, because no murder as such was prosecuted, but, rather, only killings in these specific circumstances (88–9). In ch. 5 G. investigates legislative offices usually connected to murder. However, as G. argues, neither could the quaestores parricidii investigate independently and punish with death, nor were the tresviri capitales connected to ‘the authority to kill citizens’ (98). Yet, as G. highlights, the ‘government’ could kill under specific circumstances because the senators' prime concern ‘was the protection of the res publica and not the punishment of the crime per se’ (101). Still, as G. argues in ch. 6, the inability to legalize or abolish the senatus consultum ultimum reflects the ‘tension’ described in the third chapter (124, 66). In contrast, the hostis declaration, so G. in ch. 7, empowered Roman magistrates to kill Roman citizens (127–8). Yet, the lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficiis ‘is not quite a murder law’ (133), according to G., because no significant change in existing laws was made and the law ‘was not only or even primarily concerned with homicide’ but rather a declaration of ‘the restoration of order’ (134). Having made her case that no murder law existed in Republican Rome, G. claims in the very brief epilogue that the increase in public violence after 81 b.c. caused changes to Sulla's law which finally facilitated its modification ‘into a murder law’ (141).

The book offers some interesting hypotheses concerning the rôle of homicide in Republican Rome. However, it is disappointing that important aspects raised in the introduction are not followed up in the book. Thus, while criticizing the ignorance of differences between Republican Roman Latin and modern English expressions for the terms murder and crime in her introduction (2–4), G. still employs these very words throughout the book in reference to Roman contexts (e.g., 66, 72, 111). How a law on ‘murder’ should be identified within a society that lacks a term for ‘murder’ is similarly not addressed. In addition, G. does not attempt to define what could have constituted a ‘crime’ in a Republican Roman context and, instead, relies on Black's Law Dictionary (1990) for a modern definition (1, 67). Thus, by comparing descriptions of Republican Roman society with a twentieth-century understanding of criminal behaviour in this way, it is unsurprising that G. concludes that the Republican Romans ‘did not yet have a sense of the government as a state, that is, as an entity that could somehow be harmed by the act of one citizen killing another’ (140). Readers may also find the largely uncritical treatment of many sources problematic. This is especially true of legends, such as Livy's version of P. Horatius' killing of his sister, which is taken at face value to describe the rôle of the duoviri perduellonis in Archaic times (106–7). Because of this lack of distinction between mythical exempla and historical events, the difference between expected behaviour and actual conduct is not addressed and the value of these mythical stories in particular within the society in which they were shaped and told is left unexplored. Despite these difficulties, however, the book raises noteworthy questions and will certainly stimulate discussion.