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[German version] (Burning at the stake) was a form of Roman capital punishment. The execution may originally have been left to the injured party and his agnates (  agnatio ) in a kind of ‘channelled’ private revenge. In that case, the criminal proceedings served only to establish the prosecutor's right to carry out the private punishment. This is probably how we should understand Gaius' report in his comm. on the Twelve Tables (Dig. 47,9,9), which states that this law (pl. 8,10) ordered execution by fire for premeditated arsons: igni necari iubetur (interpretation according to [1], b…

[German version] (also gesta). Generally an expression for transactions relevant to business (not necessarily legal transactions). In Roman civil law the following are significant: (1) the pro herede gestio (behaviour as an heir), informal behaviour (e.g. taking possession) as an expression of the desire to come into an inheritance ( Succession, law of). (2) the negotiorum gestio (modern law: conducting business without a commission). In Roman law it concerns all affairs in the conduct of someone else's transactions that are not commissioned (  mandatum ) or…

[German version] The abolitio, which has come down to us in the Digest title 48,16, is in Roman law discontinuation of criminal proceedings, often with the effect of a pardon (  indulgentia ), but mainly with the possibility of renewing the charge, as with the abolitio publica, ordered by the Senate or in exceptional cases by the emperor, and the abolitio privata, pronounced by the judge at the request of a private prosecutor. The abolitio ex lege, for example, takes effect on the death of the prosecutor. In any event this first appears under the designation abolitio in the imperial period…

[German version] In contrast to the  land register that existed ─ probably based on an Old Egyptian model [1] ─ in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt (and, in antiquity, possibly only there) as a safeguard for private property transactions, the primary purpose of estate registers (ER) and similar registers was the levy of land taxes as well as the administration of state leases. Thus, almost inevitably, they were just as widespread as those very forms of state income. A prerequisite for starting up archive…

[German version] A. Public criminal prosecution The legal technical category in classical Roman jurisprudence of the Principate applied to public criminal procedures ( iudicium publicum) where crimes were prosecuted based upon accusation (  accusatio ). As with civil legal forms in Roman Law, it is not a characteristic routine legal transaction but should rather be understood as a means of attack and defence in a trial (  actio ,   exceptio ). The meaning of the term crimen predominantly lies in the procedural field. Therefore, crimen appears most frequently in the sources in co…

[German version] In Roman law, the actus contrarius ('reversion') of the mancipatio (formal alienation). It served, for instance, for the return of objects given for fiduciary safekeeping ( fiducia ). The remancipatio was also a constituent act in the complex ceremonies of the emancipatio (release from the family group). Above all, however, it was an important element in divorce proceedings in the old manus marriage (cf. also Marriage III): if such a marriage was to be dissolved, the wife had to be released from the special authority of the husband. This remancipatio consisted of a ce…

[German version] In Roman law, legally incapable of being a witness ( testis). The Inst. Iust. (2,10,6) lists as intestabiles: women, minors, slaves, the dumb, the deaf, the mentally ill, legally incapacitated wastrels and those who had been declared improbus (dishonourable) and intestabilis by a special law. Legal arrangements of this kind result, for example, (according to Ulp. Dig. 47,10,5,9) from the lex Cornelia de iniuriis against authors or distributors of articles with offensive content or (according to Cassius Dig. 1,9,2) from the lex Iulia de repetundis against those re…

[German version] In the confusio (the ‘merging’) the same person is both debtor and creditor or owner and holder of a limited material right, e.g. a usufruct. In Roman law confusio led to the extinction of the claim or the right. The late classic jurists (3rd cent. AD) occasionally use the term consolidatio for confusio without creating material distinctions. The effect of the confusio could not be prevented by the will of the parties. However, the Roman jurists occasionally assume a duty to refound the claim or right. The opinion of the Proculians ( Law schools) that the   noxalis actio …

[German version] While the word pater familias indicates a clearly defined legal status, the designation of the Roman mother of a family is a social rather than a legal one. Originally, MF was the honorary title for a married woman living in the → manus (marital control) of her husband, with whom she had children. Her social position was, in contrast with (and in compensation for) her legal status ( Manus), a high one. She had precedence over all other members of the household apart from her husband. By the time the manus marriage had fallen into disuse, the term MF - literally the mot…

[German version] (more complete: minores viginti quinque annis; singular: minor) in Roman law those under the age of 25. In a narrower (and originally technical) meaning, persons aged 15 to 24 were called minores, in a broader sense anyone who had not reached the age of majority (at least 25 in Roman law). The legal regulations for minores in the narrow sense concerned their ability to enter into contracts and other legal transactions (contractual capacity). This must be distinguished from legal capacity, that is the ability to establish and acquire r…

[German version] In Roman legal history critique of interpolation specifically refers to the examination of the transmitted version of the texts of the Corpus Iuris for falsifications compared with the original. This is of particular relevance to the fragments from the writings of the classical jurists (1st cent. BC - 3rd cent. AD) in the  Digesta , but also to the  Institutiones in comparison to their models and even to the older imperial pronouncements collected in the  Codex Iustinianus . With regard to the Digesta, emperor Justinian himself had already given an express…

[German version] (perhaps from peregre, 'outside the fields', namely the territory of Rome) was the most important technical term of Roman law referring to foreigners (Aliens, the position of), who did not belong to the community of rights of the Roman citizens ( civitas ) but who was nevertheless an enemy or completely without rights. The dediticii , who as members of communities subjected by Rome had been given neither Roman nor Latin citizen law (Latin law), were sometimes partially distinguished from peregrini, and sometimes treated as a special group of peregrini In the time of t…

[German version] Technical term for the listing of sources at the beginning of the fragments of the digests (  Digesta ) and of the constitutions in the Codex Iustinianus ( Codex II C). The Digesta list the author from the Classical period (e.g. Ulpian), his work (e.g. ad edictum = edict commentary), and the number of the ‘book’ (e.g. libro quinto for 5th bk.); the Codex Iustinianus - as already the Codex Theodosianus - lists the emperor who enacted the respective constitution and the addressee. The inscriptiones in the Digesta were the most important sources for reconstructing the…

[German version] ('right to return home', more common in the combination ius postliminii) is explained in Just. Epit. 1,12,5 as deriving from limen (threshold), and this was supposed to have been metaphorically transferred to the boundary of Roman state territory, so that a prisoner of war, who on his return would be crossing back from beyond ( post) the 'threshold' into the Roman state, would have the right to return to his earlier position before being taken prisoner. On being taken captive by enemies (Prisoners of war), a Roman citizen would become…

[German version] The person who ‘reports’ something to a Roman authority, but in its narrower sense, esp. with regard to the   delatio nominis , the accuser. Considerable advantages were in prospect for the successful delator: as a rule, in the event of a guilty verdict he received a monetary reward in the form of a proportion of the accused man's property ([1]; with additional information in [2]). This naturally resulted in all kinds of abuse (cf. Cic. Rosc. Am. 55: Roscius was probably accused of political corruption in order t…

[German version] The Romans used the word capitale whenever the  death penalty (also poena capitis) was concerned: for the crime itself, the legal process, as well as in passing and executing a sentence, but also for the loss of personal freedom or citizenship (  deminutio capitis ) and particularly with reference to exile (  exilium ), when -- from the late Republican period -- this indeed replaced the death penalty for Roman citizens. Schiemann, Gottfried (Tübingen) Bibliography E. Cantarella, I supplizi capitali in Grecia e a Roma, 1991.

[German version] In the history of Roman politics and the ruler cult, parens (literally: either physical parent, in reality, the father) is, in the combination parens patriae (father of the fatherland), a linguistic forerunner of the exalted name for the emperor pater patriae . The best-known example of its use is in 63 BC when the title parens patriae was bestowed on Cicero by Q. Lutatius [4] Catulus in the Senate after the suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy (Cic. Sest. 121; Cic. Pis. 6). The title meant that Cicero had saved the Republic. Thi…

[German version] A. Historical foundations In a legal history sense, torture in Antiquity can be understood primarily as a means for eliciting evidence. Furthermore, torture occurs as a(n additional) punishment. The origins of the legally recognized use of torture is obscure. In the Babylonian law Code of Hammurabi (Cuneiform, legal texts in), for instance, there is no mention of torture at all [1]. By contrast, it was widespread in Greece. The Greek expression for the use of torture, βασανίζειν ( basanízein) is probably a loanword from the Orient, however, so that torture …

[German version] The services (more precisely: the daily duties) Roman ex-slaves were obliged to perform for their patron ( p atronus ) after their manumission. The phenomenon of servitude for freed people is also known from other ancient slave-holder societies ( paramonḗ ). OL did not result from the slave-patron relationship itself. Rather, freed men and -women were obliged by oath to their manumitters and repeated the obligation after being set free either in the same form or by  stipulatio . Only by means of this repetition could undertaking of OL bec…

[German version] Latin   crux or damnatio in crucem (‘sentencing to crucifixion’), Greek during the Hellenistic period ἀνασταύρωσις/ anastaúrōsis (which, however, in Hdt. 3,125 and probably also in Xenophon [10] of Ephesos 4,2 means ‘impaling’) was only one of several ways of exacting the  death penalty (II) in the Roman empire. It probably originated as deterrence against slaves in the context of the   coercitio (‘power of coercion’) by the   tresviri [1] capitales. Damnatio in crucem was perhaps based on Oriental and Punic precedents. At the time of the crucifixion of…

[German version] (also Vindex: Pompon. Dig. 1,2,2,24). A mythical figure in Roman historiography, e.g. Liv. 2,4,5-10. As a slave, V. is supposed to have discovered a plot by the Tarquinii (cf. Tarquinius [7; 12]) in 509 BC to restore rule by kings. As a reward he is supposed to have been freed and admitted to the status of Roman citizen. It is possible that these legends served as a 'historical' explanation for the fact that under Roman law manumission led to the acquisition of citizenship, and not…

[German version] From a legal perspective, the head of a family in Rome was the most important person in the family (IV.B.), its 'king' as it were [1. 75]. As holder of patria potestas and manus , he held power at any rate over wife, children (even when adult), grandchildren and slaves. As the autocrat of the family, he was the only member to hold rights and privileges: he alone had the right to dispose of the family's property and only he acquired rights from contracts and other transactions. However, he incur…

[German version] A technical term in Roman law, and as such not to be understood in the broad sense of 'privilege' in the medieval and early modern periods, still less to be equated with the same word in modern colloquial usage, Roman privilegium was a 'law for an individual', and according to the Twelve Tables (tab. 9,1) impermissible as a law of proscription at the expense of an individual: it was forbidden to propose it in the popular assembly ( ne inroganto, Cic. Leg. 3,4,11). During the Principate, prerogatives of certain institutions and groups of people were denoted by means of privilegi…

[German version] The oath to be sworn to Roman law (  ius ) or before the court (at the praetor or iudex). The older type of oath is probably the   sacramentum , which however, from the late Republic onwards with the dying out of the legis actio sacramento, essentially described the soldier's oath. The ius iurandum was sworn by  Jupiter, all the gods or by the  genius of the emperor. The magistrates swore the existing laws with a ius iurandum in leges within five days of taking up office, and magistrates stepping down usually also swore the legitimacy of their administration …

[German version] (‘One who apportions endowments’). From the 2nd cent. BC or earlier war spoils of the Roman state were occasionally distributed among the people of Rome. In the absence of an official ‘Body of Apportionment’ it fell to private citizens, divisores, to assume that function. By the end of the Republic this had led to a system of canvassing that has been described in detail in Cicero Planc. 48ff. Divisores promised in single   tribus a ‘reward’ to a sufficient number of tribus members in the event of a particular candidate being elected. If the tribus was won over and the cand…

('Twelve Tables', or, more completely, lex duodecim tabularum, 'Law of the Twelve Tables'), the most important legislation of the Roman Republic. The name originates in the tradition that they were written on twelve oak ( roboreas, as it ought to read, rather than eboreas, 'ivory', in Pompon. Dig. 1,2,2,4) tablets. However, they have not survived in epigraphic form. Text and content must be reconstructed from ancient literature. It may be assumed, in the light of accounts of the legislative process in ancient authors (esp. Liv. 3,32 ff.), that they were written around 450 BC. …

[German version] The childless who, according to Roman law dating from the time of Augustus, suffered certain legal penalties: to promote a higher birthrate, women who had many children benefited through the lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus and the lex Papia ( ius liberorum ), while on the flip-side childless people (men and women) were restricted in their capacity ( capacitas) to accept inheritances and legacies: what was left to orbi under a will, was halved (in the case of a surviving spouse reduced to a tenth). The remainder, known as the caducum (a lapsed inher…

[German version] In Rome the suspension of judicial activity generally ordered by a magistrate (the highest present in Rome) with an edict and associated with further restrictions of transactions, e.g. the closure of the state treasury (  aerarium , Cic. Har. resp. 55) or the stores in the Forum (Liv. 9,7,8). By the late Republic this order had to be preceded by a resolution of the Senate (Liv. 3,3,6). The iustitium was not solely an emergency measure but already in the Republican period could be caused by public mourning over a military defeat (Liv. 9,7,8) or the…

[German version] has two meanings in Roman law: one describing a ‘measure’ primarily of land, the other - according to the matter in hand - the same as the modern concept of an instruction (on a gift or testamentary benefit). M. agri (the land measure) was the subject of a well-known action from Paul. sent. 2,17,4  ( actio de modo agri): if the price of a piece of land was calculated according to its area, the purchaser could demand from the seller double the proportional price as a private penalty, if it transpired that the area was smaller than stated.…

[German version] I. General In the states of the Near East, in Egypt and the ancient urban societies of the Mediterranean the alien, temporarily or permanently entering these societies, was in principle outside the protection of the law, in which only fully-qualified citizens of the respective state and indirectly also their slaves and dependants were included. In general aliens were not, however, left without rights, but were subject to a special law for aliens that protected them in differentiated…

[German version] I. General points A contract is an agreement between two or more persons (possibly implicit) for the purpose of a legal result (e.g., a purchase as exchange of goods against money). Relative to the purpose of the transaction, contracts that in legal terms directly refer to the purpose, the ‘abstract’ legal transaction, which is independent of it, and the ‘ ad hoc legal transaction’ must be differentiated. A legal procedure is abstract if the legal effect is legally not linked to the result that the parties are attempting to achieve (e.g., r…

(σχολαστικός/ scholastikós). [German version] [1] Advocate in Late Antiquity In Roman procedural law of Late Antiquity a scholasticus (literally: someone 'schooled') is the advocate of a party, a late successor to the causidicus , with a certain amount of knowledge of formal rhetoric and law. Schiemann, Gottfried (Tübingen) Bibliography M. Kaser, K. Hackl, Das römische Zivilprozeßrecht, 21996, 563. [German version] [2] Palace official in Constantinople, from 422 (in Latin sources Scholasticus or Scholasticius), a palace official in Constantinople, first recorded i…

[German version] [1] Latin praenomen Latin praenomen, customary initial abbreviation originally S., then, as it became rarer, from c. 100 BC, Sp. The rare nomen gentile, Spurilius, is derived from its diminutive form, of which no record survives. Some evidence also survives from the Italic languages, e.g. Oscan Spuriis (the personal name identical to the nomen gentile). The vocative formed the basis for the Etruscan personal name Spurie, attested from the 7th cent. BC on. The Etruscan nomen gentile Spurie/ana- was absorbed into Latin in its later pronunciation as Spurinna…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient In judging crimes involving killing, no distinction was made in the ancient Middle East between homicide and manslaughter. Killing, inciting a killing, and having knowledge of a killing were all treated as capital offences and punishable with capital punishment ( Death penalty). In addition, the perpetrator's property and (enslaved) family members could, along with other forms of compensation, be handed over to the victim's family. As the collections of laws show, …

[German version] I. Mesopotamia, Egypt Leasehold in the sense of the limited taking over of the use of land used for agricultural or gardening purposes against payment of a rent, was attested in Mesopotamia from the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. Both institutional households ( Palace; Temple) as well as private individuals could function as lessors. The rent was set either at an absolute value in kind or silver, or as a part of the harvest. The one third leasehold, which meant that the lessor received 1/3 of the harvest and the leaseholder received 2/3, was typical above all for the ea…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient The death penalty as a sanction for capital offences is attested in the ancient Near East from the latter part of the 3rd millennium BC as a penalty in varying frequency in the respective statute books and (less often) as a sentence in  documents of  procedural law. Capital offences were, in particular, homicide/killing ( Killing, crimes involving),  robbery, abduction, adultery, various cases of sodomy and incest and other statutory definitions of offences, princip…

[German version] A. Definition In Roman hierarchical relationships, the term patronus refers to the person of higher rank and correlates thus with the term cliens ; the patronus took the cliens into his fides. Lintott, A. W. (Oxford) [German version] B. Private law The patronus was the holder of a right to control, initially probably as a comprehensive authority over friends (guests) and freedmen, but from about the 2nd cent. BC only as a bundle of rights of the former slave owner in relation to the freedmen manumitted by him. In the 12 Tables (tab. 8,21; Tabulae duodecim), the term patronus …

[German version] [1] Guardianship (Latin 'guardianship', from tueri, 'to protect'). Schiemann, Gottfried (Tübingen) [German version] I. Basis and typology of guardianship Tutela occurred in Roman law as tutela over those not yet of age ( impuberes) and women ( tutela mulierum), and concerned those who were not subject to the personal power of the 'father of the family' ( pater familias ) or the husband ( manus ), and were thus persons 'in their own right' ( sui iuris). The Twelve Tables ( tabulae duodecim ; tab. 5,6, c. 450 BC) prescribed the nearest mal…

[German version] A. Greek law According to the oldest Greek traditions, the relative of someone who had been killed had a religious duty to obtain revenge with the blood of the killer. As the polis grew stronger, in Athens at any rate from the time of  Dracon (7th cent. BC), the relatives were limited to judicial pursuit of the killer through a δίκη φόνου ( díkē phónou: action for homicide). Even in the Classical Period this remained a private action. In Dracon's time the blood feud (BF) could be brought to an end by payment of monetary compensation (ποινή, poinḗ: wergeld) if those seeking re…

[German version] I. Term Volksrecht, a term coined by L. Mitteis [1. 4-9] in 1891, refers to the local legal traditions in the provinces of the Imperium Romanum in contrast to Roman law as Reichsrecht. Conferment of Roman citizenship ( civitas [2]) on (virtually?) all free inhabitants of the empire by the Constitutio Antoniniana (AD 212; see [2; 3]), contrary to some sources (e.g. Theod. Gr. aff. Cur. 9,13 Raeder), did not result in an orientation of provincial legal life towards Roman law. This has been proven by papyri, inscriptions, and by legal opinions from imperial rescripts ( rescript…

I. Literary history [German version] A. General Classicism, a term formed early in the 19th cent. analogous and antithetically to ‘Romanticism’, initially means the same as the later neologism ‘classical period’: ‘highest perfection’, which was first attested in 1887 [1. 154] and in both English and French is still recognizable in the remaining ambivalence of the term classicism, especially in the contrast of ‘classicism/neo-classicism’ or ‘classicisme/néoclassicisme’ [2. 3, 5f.]. However, in the typol…

(μόρα; mόra). [German version] [1] Division of the Spartan army In the Spartan army no later than from 403 to 371 BC mora was the usual term for the six largest divisions of the infantry and cavalry assigned to it (Xen. Lac. pol. 11,4; Xen. Hell. 2,4,31; 4,5,3-19; Diod. 15,32,1). Each mora was commanded by a polémarchos   (Xen. hell. 4,4,7; 5,4,51), had a required strength of more than 1,000 men and was organised into lochoi ( lóchos). Burckhardt, Leonhard (Basle) Bibliography 1 J.F. Lazenby, The Spartan Army, 1985, 5ff. [German version] [2] Default in Roman law Default in Roman law. Schiemann…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient Codification of law, in the sense of the comprehensive and conclusive regulation of a major and more or less finite subject area, must be discounted for pre- and extra-Roman cultures, regardless of all ancient pronouncements (Egypt: Diod. Sic. 1,95,4f.; Greece: Aristot. Ath. Pol. 2,1273a 35 - 1274b 25) and modern discussions (‘Law of Ḫammurapi’: [11; 13]; Achaemenid empire: [4; 14; 16]) (see the articles in [5]; also [6; 13]). The collection, systematization or uni…

[German version] I. General Robbery is the appropriation of a moveable object belonging to another with violence against that person or by the use of threats with present danger to life and limb and with intent to appropriate the object in contravention of the law (§ 249 German Criminal Code). In law, robbery is a combination of theft and duress. In the popular mind of today, robbery is regarded as a more serious offence than simple theft. However, in ancient legal systems and until the Middle Ages, theft (by stealth) was seen as worse than (public and violent) dispossession. Hengstl, Joachi…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient The requesting of a surety to secure a contract is documented in the laws of the Ancient Orient to varying degrees. Requiring a pledge plays a large role in debt trials in agrarian societies. For example, if tenants were in arrears with their obligations, the forfeiting of a personal surety often led to debt-bondage [1; 2; 15. 179f.] with the resultant negative consequences for the social balance of a society ( Leasehold I.). The requesting of a pledge has been documented in cuneiform legal texts by documents of varying complexity from t…

[German version] I. Introduction After the supersession of the concept that the ideal economic form was an autarkic entity of production and consumption not depending upon trade (e.g. the Homeric oîkos), and after the invention of means of payment - whether in the form of unstamped precious metals or coins - purchase, i.e. the exchange of goods for money, was a self-evident element of ancient societies. In spite of its presumably general distribution, however, purchase was underdeveloped in terms of legal provision. Laws and…

(lit. 'standing', 'condition', 'position'). [German version] [1] In rhetoric (Rhetoric). The Latin rhetorical term status (Quint. Inst. 3,6,1; Cic. Top. 25,93) or constitutio (Quint. Inst. 3,6,2: 'ascertainment' i.e. of the point in dispute) equates to the Greek στάσις/ stásis (Quint. Inst. 3,6,3; Cic. Top. 25,93; Isid. Orig. 2,5,1). Walde, Christine (Basle) [German version] A. Definition In the rhetorical system (Rhetoric), status ('standing of the matter of dispute') was the determination, arrived at by a series of questions ( summa quaestio, 'crucial question': Quint. I…

[German version] I. General In antiquity homicide is often not yet differentiated from other crimes of killing ( Killing, crimes of). In many ancient laws the special reprehensibility or danger of a behaviour that resulted in the death of another human being was not yet considered a reason for a respective sanction. Thus, in the case of ancient Oriental laws, it would be inappropriate both with regard to the term and the matter to speak of particular offences amounting to homicide within the framework of crimes of killing. Neumann, Hans (Berlin) [German version] II. Greece In archaic Gre…

[German version] I. Religion F. is the cultically venerated personification of faith and veracity [1]. According to Varro (Ling. 5,74), she had been adopted in Rome from the Sabini; her cult is still in evidence at the end of the 2nd cent. AD (Tert. Apol. 24,5). F. is depicted as a woman, her head adorned with a garland or veil, dressed in a   chitṓn and péplos [2]. She appears frequently in poetry, but rarely in prose. She was considered to be a very ancient deity (Sil. Pun. 1,329f.; 2,484ff.) and therefore referred to as cana (Verg. Aen. 1,292). According to Agathocles Perì Kyzíkou (Fest. 328 L…

[German version] A. Ancient Near East There is evidence of personal (corporal) liability through surety (especially standing surety for another, rarely for oneself) as a means of guaranteeing a contract in Mesopotamian cuneiform texts from the mid-3rd millennium BC [2. 253] into the Hellenistic period [3. 64-69], using different terminologies and in different forms. The Gestellungsbürgschaft ('surety of appearance') was common (promise of the guarantor to deliver the debtor to the creditor for enforcement). In the late Babylonian (6th-4th cents. BC) Stillesitzbürgschaft ('s…

('subscription, signature'). [German version] I. Ancient legal documents The 'subscription/signature' (Gk. ὑπογραφή/ hypographḗ, Lat. subscriptio.) is an element of ancient documents. From the 2nd cent. BC onwards, private documents on papyrus in Egypt were given a signature ( hypographḗ). This probably not only consisted of the mark or full written name, but also contained a brief recapitulation of the most important content of the document, e.g. the admission of owing a certain amount of money. Thus the debtor indicated his awareness of the obligation assumed. However, the subsc…

I. General [German version] A. Term In legal terms, a document is a written declaration regarding a legal transaction. In modern opinion it is a declaration of intent in a suitable written form that is intended to provide proof in legal transactions and that permits recognition of the issuing party (e.g., [2; 8]). In general, documents include all non-literary and partially literary texts (exceptions are, e.g., poetry and amulets), i.e., apart from business documents, trial and administrative document…

[German version] [1] (Religion) see Bible; Christianity; New Testament Apocrypha; Septuagint; Testamentary literature; Vulgate (Religion) see Bible; Christianity; New Testament Apocrypha; Septuagint; Testamentary literature; Vulgate Hengstl, Joachim (Marburg/Lahn) [German version] [2] History of law (History of law) Hengstl, Joachim (Marburg/Lahn) [German version] I. General Testament (from the Latin testamentum in the sense of the final will made before witnesses; see below IV.) denotes a unilateral 'last will and testament' (or, in common E…

[German version] I. Ancient Near East The Sumerian-Akkadian terminology regarding punishment and criminal law implies that in Mesopotamia, this was already understood to be a consequence of mischief [1. 77 with note 35], directed either against the divine order [2] or the (state-sanctioned) political and social structures [3]. The same is true of Egypt [4. 68]. There was no distinction between civil and criminal law in the modern sense. The relationship between private law and so-called public law (an…

I. Ancient Orient [German version] A. General The term civil law (CL), which is derived from Roman law, covers the legal position of individuals in legal transactions and with respect to family and society. Depending on the definition, family and inheritance law are part of CL.  Legal texts in cuneiform -- as opposed to mature Roman law -- as a pre-scientific legal system are legal institutions derived from practice -- the modern categories used here are anachronistic. Sources and preliminary work on t…

[German version] [1] Public announcement by magistrates Edictum (from edicere) is a binding public announcement by Roman office bearers (  magistratus ), which presented either concrete orders or a ‘governmental agenda’ [1. 58] for the coming term of office. The word suggests an originally oral announcement [2. 178], but the historically documented form is a recording on an   album (‘white wooden plate’) at the magistrate's office. Literary tradition refers to edicts by   consules ,   aediles ,   praetores , provincial governors, tribuni plebis (  tribunus ),   censores …