Constantine's Legislation on Marriage
By Antonello Mastronardi
Despite being embedded in a more-broadly conceived program, Constantine’s legislation on marriage is peculiar on account of its two-fold attitude towards its Augustan precedent. If on the one hand, Constantine explicitly repealed Augustus’ harshness on unmarried widows and divorcees, it is remarkable that he did not mitigate the inheritance penalties that Augustus had imposed on childless spouses.
Corpulent Conquerors: The Ethnography of Vandal Decadence in Sidonius and Procopius
By Timothy Campbell Hart
Sidonius’ Panegyric to Majorian (c. 457 CE) describes a raid by pirates from the Vandal kingdom (lns. 388-440), yet in the narrative we quickly learn that the fat Vandals remained shipside while their Mauri soldiers did the actual looting. Only when Roman troops unexpectedly arrived, Sidonius explains, did the Vandals get involved in the fighting, only to make a cowardly showing of it.
Migration, Mobility, and Fiscality: Considering Collegia as Mechanisms for Integration of Migrant Craftsmen in the Late-Antique West
By John Fabiano
Migration of craftsmen and traders in search of labour was an endemic feature of the Roman world. Labour opportunities, both real and perceived, conditioned individuals’ decisions and abilities to move from one place to another. A unique feature of the late-antique world was the emergence of a fiscal regime, which impacted upon wage-labour migration.
Bureaucrats, Corruption, and the Familia: The Peculium Quasi Castrense in the Later Roman Empire
By Jonathan H. Warner
Scholars have noted the ways in which the peculium, a kind of personal fund for slaves and sons-in-power, offered a vector for depersonalized and disembedded economic relations within the conservative Roman familia. But the economic implications of the late-antique peculium quasi castrense has received less attention.
Disinheriting Heresy: Eunomians and the Roman Law of Inheritance
By Carl R Rice
Between 389 and 399 CE, the Roman emperors Valentinian II, Theodosius I, Arcadius, and Honorius issued a series of laws directed at a heretical Christian group known as the Eunomians (CTh 16.5.17 (389), 23 (394), 25 (395), 27 (395), 34 (398) and 36 (399)). Prominent among the rights under discussion in these laws was the ius testamenti faciendi (i.e., the legal right to make a will under Roman law).
Law Jokes in the Late Roman Empire
By Ryan Pilipow
This paper examines a shift in the discourse surrounding legal experts in the Roman world. In the early Empire, experts were characterized as overly pedantic men. In the late Empire, the portrayals of lawyers turned hostile as legal experts were depicted as greedy, immoral men. I argue that the shift was the result of the growing ubiquity and visibility of legal experts in the late Empire, especially after the Constitutio Antoniniana of 212 CE.