Year: 2001
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: On the Ides of March, Julius Caesar walked towards the Senate, when someone gave hirn a letter, disclosing the conjuration against hirn.But Caesar put it with the other letters he kept in his left hand, to read it later: libellumque insidiarum indicem ab obvio quodam porrectum libellis ceteris quos sinistra manu tenebat, quasi mox lecturus commiscuit (Suetonius, Vita Caesaris 82).We see that handing over a letter to a magistrate has a long tradition in Rome.I want to focus on those letters, which contained a request.It is certainly no fresh field.After Wilcken paved the way by his article in 1920, others have followed, amongst whom I mention Nörr, Honore, Millar, Williams, Haensch, Coriat and Hauken l .Why this interest?It is because the answers to these requests, when conceming legal matters, have been considered a source oflaw, if they contained the formulation of a general rule.As such they ranked among the leges datae, the orationes et epistulae senatu, the edicta, the mandata, and the decreta.These are mentioned as the sources of law generated by the emperor.They are by some scholars called ius novum, a third kind of law next to the laws originating in the state (customary law, senatus consulta, acts -the leges rogatae and the plebiscita) and in the honorary law (the edicta and the actiones): originating in the person of the emperor; but such a sharp distinction is not classicaP.For example, the edicts were a source of law in I U. Wilcken, 'Zu den Kaiserreskripten', Hermes 55 (1920), 1-42; F. Miliar, The Emperor in the Roman World (London 1977, 2nd ed.1992); w.Williams, 'The Publication oflmperial Rescripts', Zeitschriftfor Papyrologie und Epigraphik 40 (1980), 283-294; D. Nörr, 'Zur Reskriptenpraxis in der hohen Prinzipatszeit' , Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung.Rom.Abt.98 (1981), 1-46; J.D. Thomas, 'Subscriptions to Petitions to Officials in Roman Egypt', in: E. van 't Dack, P. van Dessei and W.
Source: BRILL eBooks
Author: Sirks A.J.B.
Language: English
Topic: Classical Antiquity Studies
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W2981285472