Can a new translation of classical Roman laws usher a revolution in the fields of Roman history and the history of law?
| This project will produce the first comprehensive edition of all surviving inscribed legislation from classical Rome. |
This project will produce the first comprehensive, accurate and freely available edition of all surviving inscribed legislation from classical Rome. While there have been many editions of some of these texts, there has been only one with translation and commentary, which was produced by a team of 23 international researchers between 1983 and 1996. Their publication was immediately recognized as deeply problematic, with very significant strengths but also signal failings. It also omitted a number of essential and very substantial documents, and others have been discovered since then. The project will produce a new print edition and an open-access repository of the material, with introductions, translation, and commentary designed to appeal to students and experts alike, across multiple disciplines, from classicists to historians of constitutional law, and from scholars of empire to students of legal language. The material will make possible the study of the material basis of ancient legal knowledge and the practice of law, the evidence of which is extraordinarily difficult to access. Roman Statutes will amount to a revolution in the fields of Roman history and the history of law, and all areas of study and theory informed by those fields.
David B. and Clara E. Stern Distinguished Service Professor; Professor of Classics, History and in the College
University of Chicago
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