Legal Culture

This paper demonstrates that the classical texts formed an essential and determinative part of James Wilson’s theory of popular sovereignty. The American founding father studied classical languages and texts at the University of St. Andrews before immigrating to the American colonies where the College of Philadelphia gave him a position as tutor in the Latin department and awarded him with an honorary master’s of arts degree in recognition of his learning.

It is generally accepted among historians that a fairly extensive set of international legal rules and institutions governed the Greek world. They included customary laws, such as protections for heralds; the rules of treaties, hundreds of which are attested in our surviving sources; and varieties of international arbitration of disputes (Couvenhes; Barta; Giovannini; Low; Bederman; Ager). But we still do not fully understand why Greeks used, complied with, and enforced international law as frequently as they did: practical self-interest? ethics? religious obligation?

In the mid-eighth century in the Ekloge, the Isaurian law code, we read a law against sex between males: "The aselgeis, both the one doing it and the one receiving it, let them pay the penalty by the sword. But if the one receiving is discovered to be less than twelve years old, he should be excused, as his age shows that he did not understand this thing he had undergone" (17.38: Οἱ ἀσελγεῖς, ὅ τε ποιῶν καὶ ὁ ὑπομένων, ξίφει τιμωρείσθωσαν· εἰ δὲ ὁ ὑπομένων ἥττων τῶν δώδεκα ἐτῶν εὑρεθῇ, συγχωρείσθω, ὡς τῆς ἡλικίας δηλούσης μὴ εἰδέναι αὐτόν, τί ὑπέμεινεν).

In this paper, I argue that the late Roman discourse of law served as a tool for disrupting a traditional social, political hierarchy. Legal experts, such as jurists and advocates, were proficient in this discourse and thus were uniquely qualified to direct, question, and refute imperial power. To highlight the disruptive power of legal discourse, I analyze a case from Ammianus Marcellinus in which the imperial quaestor, Eupraxius, publicly corrects the ruthless emperor, Valentinian.