0521497019 cambridge university press legitimacy and law in the roman world tabulae in roman belief and practice mar 2004

L E G I T I M A C Y A N D L AW I N T H E
RO M A N W O R L D

Greeks wrote mostly on papyrus, but 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; its power to order the human realm and cosmos and to make documents efficacious; its role in court; the uneven
spread – an aspect of Romanization – of this Roman form outside
Italy, as provincials made different guesses as to what would please
their Roman overlords; and its influence on the evolution of Roman
law. An historical epoch of Roman legal transactions without writing is revealed as a juristic myth of origins. 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 the
Roman law was scarce – and enforcers scarcer – the Roman law drew
its authority from a wider world of belief.
e l i z a b e t h a . m eye r is Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia and has published articles on Roman history and
epigraphy in several major journals.



L E G I T I M A C Y A N D L AW I N
T H E RO M A N W O R L D
Tabulae in Roman Belief and Practice

E L I Z A B E T H A . M EY E R
University of Virginia


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for my mother, and in memory of
my father (7.27.15–11.17.93)

Contents

List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of abbreviations

page vi
ix
xi
1

Introduction
pa rt o n e : t h e wo r l d o f b e l i e f
1 The use and value of Greek legal documents

12

2 Roman perceptions of Roman tablets: aspects and
associations

21

3 The Roman tablet: style and language

44

4 Recitation from tablets

73

5 Tablets and efficacy

91

pa rt t wo : t h e evo lu t i o n o f p r ac t i c e
6 Roman tablets in Italy (ad 15–79)

125

7 Roman tablets and related forms in the Roman provinces
(30 bc–ad 260)

169

8 Tablets and other documents in court to ad 400

216

9 Documents, jurists, the emperor, and the law (ad 200–ad 535)

250
294

Conclusion
References
Index

299
341
vii

Illustrations

1 Phase 1 Campanian wooden document: simple diptych.
2 Phase 2 Campanian wooden document: doubled diptych.
3 Phase 3 Campanian wooden document: doubled diptych
with sulcus.
4 Phase 4 Campanian wooden document: triptych.
5 Phase 5 Campanian wooden document: pertusa triptych.
6 Physical forms of formal procedural acts and official copies
from first-century ad Campania.
7 Physical forms of formal financial documents from
first-century ad Campania.
8 Physical forms of chirograph documents from
first-century ad Campania.
9 Papyrus double-document.

viii

page 128
129
130
131
132
147
148
153
189

Acknowledgments

The trunk, branches, and leaves of this book have their root in a Yale thesis
of many years ago. Ramsay MacMullen and Gordon Williams supervised
it, and in years after the one propped and guided the sapling, while the
other watered it with a gardener’s anxious patience, and kept the gnawing
squirrels away. Richard Garner, too, guarded the shoot at its emergence,
and subsequently encouraged its growth. J. E. Lendon – with much sweat
and occasional good-natured swearing – repeatedly pruned over-luxuriance,
those branches that drew off vitality from the major growth. Without their
devoted care, weeds, drought, and beetles might long ago have doomed the
tree.
Others, too, have been remarkably kind and generous with their time.
The entire manuscript was read, at different stages, by Daniel Gargola,
Joseph Kett, Melvyn Leffler, Diana Moses, T. F. X. Noble, Richard Saller,
Michele Salzman, and David Snyder. Helpful anonymi read it as well, both
for the Press and for the University of Virginia, and sent unsigned suggestions for improvement. (Keith Hopkins long ago, and David Johnston
more recently, have unveiled themselves, and so it is my privilege to thank
them by name.) Help with queries or specific chapters was generously given
by Edward Courtney, Joe Day, Denis Feeney, Kenneth Harl, Ann Kuttner,
David Martinez, and Elizabeth Tylawsky. Together all have helped to make
this a far better book, although they are not, of course, responsible for its
contents.
Fellowships from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, the American
Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities,
and the University of Virginia all provided time to work on the project. As
a junior fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies, under the enlightened
regime of Kurt Raaflaub and Deborah Boedeker, my understanding of
Greek parallels in the Roman imperial context was much advanced. Friends

and colleagues at the Center, at Yale (once upon a time), and now at the
ix


x

Acknowledgments

University of Virginia – especially the art historian Christopher Johns –
have all made me realize how fortunate I have been in my intellectual
companions, and how necessary such companionship is in the creation of
any scholarly work.
Pauline Hire accepted the book for publication by Cambridge, but its
revision outlasted her reign, and as a consequence it appears under the able
and protective editorship of Michael Sharp, who has also provided much
helpful support in the years it has taken us to get this book to press. I am also
grateful to Lew Purifoy and his peerless Interlibrary loan staff at Virginia,
to Mike Powers, who checked references for me, and to Linda Woodward,
who meticulously copy-edited a long and difficult typescript.
Unless indicated, translations are my own, but are often influenced by those
of previous translators: to any I may have slighted of recognition, I offer
my thanks here.


Abbreviations

Standard abbreviations (from H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek–English
Lexicon [Oxford, 1968] or the OLD, sometimes expanded) are used for
ancient authors and works cited in the notes. Abbreviations for papyri and
tablets come from J. F. Oates et al., Checklist of Greek, Latin, Demotic and

Coptic Papyri, Ostraca, and Tablets, 5th edn. (Bulletin of the American Society
of Papyrologists Supplement 9 [2001]); I have listed other abbreviations I use
most frequently below, along with abbreviations for collections of Roman
law books and inscriptions. Journal titles are written out in full in the
bibliography.
AE
ANRW
CAH 2
CCSL
CEL
CGL
ChLA
CIL
CJ
CLE

L’Ann´ee ´epigraphique, various editors (1888– ). Paris.
Aufstieg und Niedergang der r¨omischen Welt,
H. Temporini and W. Haase, eds. (1972– ). Berlin
and New York.
The Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd edn., various
editors (1961– ). Cambridge.
Corpus christianorum series latina, various editors
(1956– ). Turnhout.
Corpus epistularum latinarum (Papyrologica florentina
23), P. Cugusi, ed. (1992). Florence.
Corpus glossariorum latinorum, G. Goetz, ed.
(1893–1901), seven volumes. Leipzig.
Chartae latinae antiquiores, A. Bruckner and
R. Marichal, eds. (1954– ). Basel.

Corpus inscriptionum latinarum, various editors
(1863– ). Berlin.
Codex Iustinianus (Corpus iuris civilis, 3rd edn., ii),
P. Krueger, ed. (1884). Berlin.
Carmina latina epigraphica, F. Buecheler and
E. Lommatzsch, eds. (1895–1926). Leipzig.
xi


xii
Coll.
Cons.
CPL
CT

D.
DJD 27

FGH
FIRA 2
FV
G.
GL
IC
IDR/TabCerD.
IG
IGBulg.
IGLS
IGR

Abbreviations
Mosaicarum et romanarum legum collatio, J. Baviera,
ed., in FIRA 2 ii.544–89.
Consultatio veteris cuiusdam iurisconsulti, J. Baviera,
ed., in FIRA 2 ii.591–613.
Corpus papyrorum latinarum, R. Cavanaile, ed.
(1958). Wiesbaden.
Theodosiani libri XVI cum constitutionibus
Sirmondianis et leges novellae ad Theodosianum
pertinentes I. Codex Theodosianus, 2nd edn.,
T. Mommsen and P. Meyer, eds. (1905). Berlin.
Digesti Iustiniani Augusti, T. Mommsen and
P. Krueger, eds. (1868). Berlin.
Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XXVII: Aramaic,
Hebrew and Greek Documentary Texts from Nah.al
H
. ever and Other Sites, H. M. Cotton and
A. Yardeni, eds. (1997). Oxford.
Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, F. Jacoby,
ed. (1923– ). Berlin.
Fontes iuris romani anteiustiniani, 2nd edn.,
S. Riccobono et al., eds., (1940–69), three volumes.
Florence.
Fragmenta quae dicuntur vaticana, J. Baviera, ed., in
FIRA 2 ii.464–540.
Gai institutionum commentarii quattuor, E. Seckel
and B. K¨ubler, eds. (1935). Leipzig.
Grammatici latini, H. Keil, ed. (1855–1923), eight
volumes. Leipzig.
Inscriptiones creticae, M. Guarducci, ed. (1925–50),

four volumes. Rome.
Inscript¸iile Daciei Romane i.165–264 (Tablitele
Cerate Dacice), I. Russu, ed. (1975).
Bucharest.
Inscriptiones graecae, various editors (1873– ). Berlin.
Inscriptiones graecae in Bulgaria repertae,
H. Mikhailov, ed. (1958–70). Sofia.
Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie, L. Jalabert
et al., eds. (1911–86). Paris.
Inscriptiones graecae ad res romanas pertinentes,
R. Cagnat et al., eds. (1906–27), three volumes.
Paris.


Abbreviations
IKEph.
IKSmyrna
IKStrat.
ILBelg.
ILLRP
ILS
Inscr.Ital.
I.Priene
Just. Inst.
Lex Irn.
Leg. Vis.
LRB
NMaj., NMarc.,
NT, N.Val.

OGIS
OLD
ORF 4

xiii

Inschriften griechischer St¨adte aus Kleinasien 11–17:
Die Inschriften von Ephesos, H. Wankel
et al., eds. (1979–84). Bonn.
Inschriften griechischer St¨adte aus Kleinasien 23–24:
Die Inschriften von Smyrna, G. Petzl, ed. (1982–90).
Bonn.
Inschriften griechischer St¨adte aus Kleinasien 21–22:
Die Inschriften von Stratonikeia, M. C
¸ etin S¸ahin, ed.
(1981–90). Bonn.
Les Inscriptions latines de Belgique, A. Deman and
M.-T. Raepsaet-Charlier, eds. (1985). Brussels.
Inscriptiones latinae liberae rei publicae, A. Degrassi,
ed. (1963–5), two volumes. Florence.
Inscriptiones latinae selectae, H. Dessau, ed.
(1892–1916), three volumes. Berlin.
Inscriptiones Italiae, various editors (1931/2– ). Rome.
Inschriften von Priene, F. Hiller von Gaertringen, ed.
(1906). Berlin.
Iustiniani institutiones, 2nd edn., P. Krueger, ed.
(1899). Berlin.
“The Lex Irnitana: a New Copy of the Flavian
Municipal Law,” J. Gonzalez, Journal of Roman
Studies 76 (1986): 147–243.

Leges visigothorum, K. Zeumer, ed. (1902), in
Monumenta germaniae historica. Leges (quarto
series), Sectio 1, vol. i. Hanover and Leipzig.
Lex romana burgundiorum, L. R. de Salis, ed. (1892),
in Monumenta germaniae historica. Leges (quarto
series), Sectio 1, vol. ii part 1 (pp. 123–63). Hanover.
Theodosiani libri XVI cum constitutionibus
Sirmondianis et leges novellae ad Theodosianum
pertinentes ii. Leges novellae ad Theodosianum
pertinentes, 2nd edn., T. Mommsen and P. Meyer,
eds. (1905). Berlin.
Orientis graeci inscriptiones selectae, W. Dittenberger,
ed. (1903–5), two volumes. Leipzig.
The Oxford Latin Dictionary, P. G. W. Glare et al.,
eds. (1982). Oxford.
Oratorum romanorum fragmenta, 4th edn.,
H. Malcovati, ed. (1967). Padua.


xiv
Paulus, Sent.
P.Euphr.

P.Euphr.Syr.

PG
PGM 2
P. Jericho
PL
P. Mur.

P.Yadin

Abbreviations
Sententiarum receptarum libri quinque, qui vulgo
Julio Paulo adhuc tribuuntur, J. Baviera, ed., in
FIRA 2 ii.321–417.
1–5: D. Feissel and J. Gascou, “Documents
d’archives romains in´edits du moyen Euphrate (iiie
si`ecle apr`es J.-C.) i. Les P´etitions (P.Euphr. 1 a` 5),”
Journal des Savants (no volume, 1989): 65–119.
6–10: D. Feissel, J. Gascou, and J. Teixidor,
“Documents d’archives romains in´edits du moyen
Euphrate (iiie si`ecle apr`es J.-C.) ii. Les Actes de
vente–achat (P.Euphr. 6 a` 10),” Journal des Savants
(no volume, 1997): 3–57.
11–17: D. Feissel and J. Gascou, “Documents
d’archives romains in´edits du moyen Euphrate (iiie
si`ecle apr`es J.-C.) iii. Actes divers et lettres
(P.Euphr. 11 a` 17),” Journal des Savants (no volume,
2000): 157–208.
J. Teixidor, “Deux documents syriaques du iiie si`ecle
apr`es J.-C, provenant du moyen Euphrate,” Comptes
rendus de l’acad´emie des inscriptions et belles-lettres
(no volume, 1990): 145–66.
Patrologiae graecae cursus completus, series graeca, J. P.
Migne, ed. (1844–91). Paris.
Papyri graecae magicae, 2nd edn., K. Preisendanz and
A. Henrichs, eds. (1973–4). Stuttgart.
Discoveries in the Judaean Desert xxxviii:
Miscellaneous Texts from the Judaean Desert,

J. Charlesworth et al., eds. (2000). Oxford.
Patrologiae latinae cursus completus, series latina, J. P.
Migne, ed. (1844–91). Paris.
Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 2: les grottes
de Murabba aë ˆ t, P. Benoit et al., eds. (1961).
Oxford.
The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the
Cave of Letters 1: Greek Papyri, N. Lewis, ed. (1989).
Jerusalem.
The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the
Cave of Letters 2: Hebrew, Aramaic and
Nabatean-Aramaic, Y. Yadin et al., eds. (2002).
Jerusalem.


Abbreviations
RE
RIB

RIJ
SEG
SIG 3
T.Alb.
TAM
TH

TPSulp.

xv

Real-Encyclop¨adie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft, A. F. von Pauly et al., eds.
(1894– ). Stuttgart.
The Roman Inscriptions of Britain i, R. B.
Collingwood and R. P. Wright, eds. (1965). Oxford.
The Roman Inscriptions of Britain ii, S. S. Frere and
R. Tomlin, eds. (1992). Oxford.
Recueil des inscriptions juridiques grecques,
R. Dareste, B. Haussoullier, and T. Reinach, eds.,
(1891–4), three volumes. Paris.
Supplementum epigraphicum graecum, various editors
(1923– ). Leiden.
Sylloge inscriptionum graecarum, 3rd edn.,
W. Dittenberger, ed. (1915–24). Leipzig.
Les Tablettes Albertini: actes priv´es de l’´epoque
vandale, C. Courtois et al., eds. (1952). Paris.
Tituli Asiae Minoris, various editors (1901– ).
Vienna.
1–12: G. Pugliese Carratelli, “Tabulae Herculanenses
i,” Parola del Passato 1 (1946): 379–85.
13–30: G. Pugliese Carratelli, “Tabulae Herculanenses
ii,” Parola del Passato 3 (1948): 165–84.
31–58: G. Pugliese Carratelli, “Tabulae Herculanenses
iii,” Parola del Passato 8 (1953): 454–63.
59–75: V. Arangio-Ruiz and G. Pugliese Carratelli,
“Tabulae Herculanenses iv,” Parola del Passato 9
(1954): 54–74.
76–87: V. Arangio-Ruiz and G. Pugliese Carratelli,
“Tabulae Herculanenses v,” Parola del Passato 10
(1955): 448–77.

88–102: V. Arangio-Ruiz and G. Pugliese Carratelli,
“Tabulae Herculanenses vi,” Parola del Passato 16
(1961): 66–73.
those published and numbered (1–16) by M. Della
Corte, “Tabelle cerate Ercolanesi,” Parola del Passato
6 (1951): 224–30, are cited as Della Corte (1951) in
the notes.
Tabulae Pompeianae Sulpiciorum (TPSulp.): edizione
critica dell’archivio puteolano dei Sulpicii (Vetera 12),
G. Camodeca, ed. (1999). Naples.


xvi
T.Vindol. i
T.Vindol. ii
Ulp. Reg.

Abbreviations
Vindolanda: The Latin Writing Tablets (Britannia
monograph series no. 4), A. K. Bowman and J. D.
Thomas, eds. (1983). London.
The Vindolanda Writing Tablets (Tabulae
Vindolandenses II), A. K. Bowman and J. D.
Thomas, eds. (1994). London.
Tituli xxviii ex corpore Ulpiani qui vulgo Domitio
Ulpiano adhuc tribuuntur, J. Baviera, ed., in FIRA 2
ii.262–301.


Introduction

With typically Roman prudence the emperor [Trajan], by a preliminary test of
the trustworthiness of the oracle [of Apollo], took steps to thwart the possibility
of hidden human trickery, and began by sending sealed tablets [codicillos] with
a request for a written reply. To the surprise of the priests, who were, of course,
unaware of the nature of the emperor’s tablets, the god bade a sheet of papyrus
[chartam] be brought and ordered it to be sealed, without any writing on it, and
dispatched. When Trajan received the document he was filled with astonishment,
since the tablets [tabellis] he had sent to the god also had had no writing on them;
and he then wrote and sealed other tablets [codicillis], to ask whether he would
return to Rome after the war was over. The god thereupon bade a centurion’s vine
branch be brought from among the dedicated offerings in the temple, broken in
pieces, and the pieces wrapped and sent to the emperor. (Macrobius, Saturnalia
1.23.14–16)

To the god the emperor of the Romans sent tablets; to the emperor the
god of the Greeks sent papyrus in reply. Apollo was far the more practical:
Egyptian papyrus was the paper of the ancient world, inexpensive and, in
the East, ubiquitous. In parts of the Roman Empire where papyrus could
not be had cheaply, as in the cold camps on Hadrian’s Wall, folk might write
instead on the bark of trees. But for certain types of composition, Romans
like Trajan – although their world rustled with papyrus – preferred to write
instead on thick wooden boards, on tabulae, on tablets. Yet tabulae were
objects of complex manufacture, and so expensive; writing on a tablet –
usually with a stylus on a coating of wax set into a rectangular depression
in the board – was more laborious than writing with a pen on papyrus;
and tabulae were heavy to carry and awkward to store. So the frequent
Roman choice of the tablet as a medium for writing is a curious one, and
presents an appealing antiquarian mystery that would have delighted the
kind of ancient sage who thrilled to ponder mysteries like “why the priest

of Jupiter, whom they call the flamen dialis, is not allowed to touch either

1


2

Introduction

flour or yeast?” or why Greeks and Romans wore rings on the fourth finger
of the left hand.1
Yet from the gnarled root of this apparently antiquarian puzzle ramifies
a tree of historical questions and answers: they are the subject of this book.
These are questions about the archaic Roman world-view, about ways of
ordering the state and cosmos, about legitimate authority, about the interaction of conquerors and conquered and Roman government and its
subjects, about Roman justice and its social context, and finally about the
historical evolution of the Roman law. For the peculiar Roman practice
of writing on tablets had a cultural resonance. Tracing its significance and
history reveals something about what it meant to be Roman.
A Plutarch or an Aulus Gellius who asked questions about the flamen
dialis could, and in Plutarch’s case often did, propose multiple but not
necessarily contradictory solutions to such delightful puzzles.2 So too writing on tablets can have multiple justifications. As a medium for writing,
tablets had practical attractions, especially for preserving important documents and preventing fraud: writing on wax showed evidence of tampering;
folded together, wax tablets were hard to damage; sealed up with string they
were difficult for malefactors to break into unnoticed. The crude physical
and practical differences between tablets and papyri are the beginning of
an explanation for the differences in how Romans used them. But not the
entirety of it: this book’s argument is that writing on tablets was perceived
by Romans to have special powers. This belief was eventually incorporated
into late-antique Roman law, where as a concept it is the ancestor of the

modern document called, in lawyer’s terms, “dispositive”: the legal document as the legal act itself. That written documents have decisive force at
law may strike a modern reader as uncontroversial, as a type of universal
truth. At Rome, however, this status in legal commentary and written law
was only achieved over centuries, and classical jurists did not espouse it.
Tablets, their uses, and their efficacy form the link: they are part of a continuous tradition linking earliest and latest Roman thought and practice,
Roman history and Roman law. Tablets were a special kind of writing with
their own history, moving from a semi-religious, quasi-magical Republican
world of ceremonial and public order to the highly rhetorical yet pragmatic
world of late-antique imperial law.
It was legal documents that Romans most often wrote on tablets. Yet
in a book of nine chapters only in the last are the views of the Roman
1
2

Plut. Mor. 289e; Gel. 10.10.
Feeney (1998) 129–30, on Plutarch.


Introduction

3

jurists and the evolution of the Roman law systematically discussed. This
reverses the method of investigation that would be followed by Romanists,
professional students of Roman law: their first resort would be to the clean
and apparently definitive discussions of the classical jurists, and only after
this might they glance at the world of what people actually did to see how
well or ill shabby popular practices conformed with these juristic precepts.3
The backwards structure of this book reflects both the chronological distribution of the evidence and my historian’s prejudice that Roman law can be
profitably approached historically. This demands, in turn, that before the

written law itself is examined, tablets first be placed in their contexts: the
wide realm of Roman justice – the far larger mass of behavior manifest in
document and court, only a small part of which strict law touched – and
the even wider world of Roman culture, without which Roman justice is
itself incomprehensible.
An underlying aim of the book is to throw another rope bridge over the
chasm between the study of Roman history and the study of Roman law,
a crevasse that has been growing broader and more forbidding for nearly a
century. In Mommsen’s day the assumptions underlying the study of history and of law fitted well together, and the same men often studied both.
But decades of independent evolution have left Romanist and historian
inhabiting two nearly irreconcilable mental worlds. The Roman empire of
the Romanist is still much the same orderly commonwealth that Mommsen
imagined, a recognizably modern state grounded in the rule of law. But the
Roman empire many contemporary Roman historians now imagine has
evolved into something weaker, less rational, and more ad hoc: they see in
Rome the deliberately arbitrary and enjoyably corrupt monarchies of the
ancien r´egime, old Sicily rather than modern Zurich. And so the kind of
question that can occupy the Romanist, like “What is the essential nature
of Roman obligation?” seems at times almost surreal to the historian, who
cannot imagine why, in a world without police and with a distant government, where not even judges were expected to have legal knowledge, anyone
could or would pay close attention to this type of legal discussion. But the
Romans also took their law very seriously, and thought it characteristic of
themselves to do so: the law cannot safely be left out of an historical vision
of their world. So why and how could law in fact work in this kind of
world? Not because it was rigorously and minutely enforced by thousands
of officials or revered in its details by a knowledgeable public, but because
it was anchored fathoms deep in Roman culture. By anchoring the efficacy
3

See Crook (1996) on the differences between Romanists and historians.

4

Introduction

of the law in Roman culture, and trying to understand not so much what
the law was but why it commanded respect, this book instead offers a way
of reintegrating law into the Roman world the historians see, and gives to
the project and concerns of Romanists an historical justification they may
not have known they needed. It charts practical Roman conceptions of
legitimacy, not the law itself, in a Roman world whose commitment to the
law was intermittent.
To the Romanist, this book also offers a contextual perspective on the
thinkers they study. Roman jurists responded to and relied on long-lived
traditional practices and expectations, and to some extent set themselves
and their work beyond them. Understanding the cultural context of the
law therefore casts into higher relief the originality of the juristic tradition
and juristic methods of thought, and helps also to delineate just what
was original. A study that proceeds from lay practitioners to jurists reveals
that laymen – even those who went to court and drafted and valued legal
documents – did not think in the same ways as jurists. The edifice the
jurists built had its own units of measurement and building materials, as
Romanists have long known, but this book offers them an opportunity
also to stroll around the grounds and appreciate the Great House from the
perspective of game park and tributary village. It also invites Romanists
to contemplate the possibility, fundamental to anthropological studies of
law and taken as true here,4 that the Great House could not exist or speak
effectively without a common basis of understanding with its villagers:
that their practices and beliefs exercised a considerable influence over what

the Great House could accomplish. Not necessarily over what it said, but
whether it would be listened to, for if the villagers did not deem the law
and the authority of those who spoke and wrote it legitimate it would not
work.
To the historian of Rome, the classicist, or to anyone interested in Roman
things, this book offers an understanding of what Romans thought were
powerful ways of getting things done, and how these evolved over time.
Study of how tablets were used in the Republic reveals that the ordering
of state, religion, magic, legal procedure, and some legal acts all shared
an ancient and ceremonial protocol in which writing on tabulae played
an important part, a protocol that we shall call the “unitary act” because
all of its many parts had to be accomplished if it was to work. When
performed correctly a unitary act irrevocably changed some aspect of the
visible or invisible world: it did not need human enforcers, but drew its
4

Moore (1978) 1–31; see also Rosen (1989) 81–2.


Introduction

5

power and authority from the formal ritual of its own making. Another way
of getting things done at Rome was through relations of reciprocity, either
the familiar exchange of money for goods and services or the reciprocal
exchange of favors. Since reciprocation was often not immediate, such
social relations were underwritten by the good faith – fides – of the parties.
This way of accomplishing one’s ends also affects the appearance and use
of tabulae, as fides and its real-world expressions – bona fides legal acts,

sealing, subscribing, writing in one’s own hand – migrated onto the tablet
that had drawn its traditional power from the unitary act, as well as from its
traditional ability to reveal fraud. Fides supplied the human protectors and
enforcers that the unitary act traditionally had not needed: the absolute
efficacy of the unitary act was bolstered by fides, fides itself was validated
by the certain power of the unitary act, and the improved and protected
tabula that resulted was authoritative, powerfully supported, and splendidly
useful as proof. For centuries the combined power of ceremonial unitary
acts and fides on legal tabulae was comfortably relied upon by laymen and
assumed by at least some Roman jurists, who reverentially burnished and
repaired its parts. But late-antique emperors – and those who drafted their
laws – sometimes felt able to set aside traditionally authoritative forms,
substituting for them the authority of the imperial will. What once magicoreligious authority had established, what the fides of individuals had once
fortified, what pragmatic imperatives had once embraced, now universal
acceptance of the authority of the emperor was thought adequate to uphold.
Understanding of legitimacy could change and develop: legitimacy did
not depend merely on inert and conservative traditionalism, but could be
shaped by the Romans’ ability creatively to combine traditional forms of
efficacy and new ways of thinking.
As the power of the Romans grew they took their characteristic ways
of doing things – and so their tablets – with them out into the provinces
of their empire and used them not only between each other but as the
perceptible voice of government. Provincials who sought the ear of Roman
officials in some places hastened to mimic this Roman form – even if only by
writing on and folding their papyrus differently – and in others left it strictly
alone. This significantly uneven pattern of cultural influence illuminates
the process by which subjects were introduced to, and adopted, the ways of
their Roman overlords, and so helps us understand the complex process of
exchange and acculturation we have come to know as romanization. At the
same time it allows insight into the impact of the Roman government in the

provinces: Roman officials, for example, interested themselves acutely in
the treatment and preservation of documents, an exception to the otherwise


6

Introduction

hands-off Roman style of ruling. And whatever the effect of their furious
edicts it is possible to trace indirect influence out from Rome (what the
emperor did) to the provinces (what the governors did) to the subject, in
how he or she made his or her documents conform to Roman expectations.
The true power of a weak, distant Roman government – how it changed the
lives of its subjects most – may lie more in the consequences of government’s
passive expectations about how those who approached it should comport
themselves than in its active decrees, more in the example it set than in its
positive activities, more in legal practice than in the law itself.
Part I of this book is a synchronic analysis of the traditional power of
the tablet in Roman society. After setting up a contrast through an initial
chapter on Greek legal documents, it establishes the shared characteristics, significance, and common power of different types of tabulae. In each
of its chapters, it reconnects Roman legal documents, which were always
written on tablets, with this older world of thought and belief. Wooden
tabulae were a very ancient special form. They were used in the context of
special acts (mostly ceremonial and formal), shared antique language and
style, were put to similar uses, and displayed certain performative, almost
magical, powers. Their capacity to fix, preserve, and finish was proverbial, making them (for example) a conventional image for the power of
memory. If you fix images to backgrounds like letters to wax tablets, said
Cicero, you will have them in your mind forever.5 The active participation of tablets in great ceremonial acts gave them a special importance
to Romans, and a special resonance and power whenever they were used.
Legal tablets – which were one essential part of the legal ceremonies that

individuals performed between themselves, like contracts – drew their own
socially approved worth from their membership in this larger family of
tablets.
The weight of the evidence in Part i is chiefly Republican. Part ii is a
diachronic history of the legal tablet from the first century ad through
the reign of Justinian. Two chapters survey archeological finds of tablets,
first in Italy and then elsewhere in the empire, tracing the evolution of the
physical form of the tablet and the legal acts written upon them through
ad 300. Practice is the story here; fides and romanization are the themes.
Then the story is carried forward by investigating how tablets were used
in Roman courts and how they were treated by classical and late-antique
jurists: here there is attention to the relationship of strict law to broader
5

Cic. de Orat. 2.354 and Part. 7.26, Rhet. Her. 3.31; conventional, see (e.g.) Plat. Theaet. 194c or, later,
Artem. Oneir. 2.45 and Eun. VS 495 (the orator Libanius).


Introduction

7

legal affairs and relations between subject and government in the Roman
world.
The straddle this book attempts between Roman history and law means
that, despite best efforts, it does not precisely conform to the standards of
either field. Thus quotation of Latin (and Greek) is selective, and translations, especially of texts on tablets and legal texts – usually my own – often
deliberately follow the Latin with agonizing closeness, to let the rough and
often asyndetic syntax of tablets’ Latin, as noticeable and characteristic to
Romans as it is to us, come through clearly. The material cited in the notes

is hardly stingy, but Romanists will feel the lack of a thorough review of
scholarship, will feel that I have drawn back – perhaps unfairly – from
overly explicit participation in the controversies into which my positions
oblige me to plunge, and will feel that the argument lacks the elegant and
economical decisiveness that argument from legal texts permits them to
achieve. This is not least because the book attempts to shift the assumptions and the basis of argument and to make the positive, but often messily
historical, case for itself. It aims to restore the context and traditions of
Roman belief and practice to the study of Roman law, and to the study
of writing in Roman law in particular. It seeks to draw together law and
legal practice, religious and magical beliefs, Campanian wood tabulae and
Egyptian papyrus double-documents. Above all, it aspires to yoke them into
a coherent and interrelated entity, into a loosely governed but dynamic cosmos, into a broad empire of diversity and similarity – into a world like that
the Romans ruled, when once they ruled a world.