The God and the Bureaucrat: Roman Law, Imperial Sovereignty, and Other Stories (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781009629959)

Why is Roman law so boring? In this book, Zachary Herz argues that the bureaucratic, positivistic world of Roman law is not a distraction from the violent autocracy of the Roman empire, but an imagined escape. Lawyers, bureaucrats, and even emperors used legal writing to think about worlds that were safer or fairer than the one in which they lived. This archive of political imagination slowly became a law-code, and now guides readers through a legal system about which its authors could only dream. From Augustus to Justinian, this book shows how law symbolized order in chaotic times, and how that symbol eventually took on a life of its own. From the enlightened judgements of Hadrian to the great jurists and child rulers of Severan Rome, Herz reveals what Romans were really talking about when they talked about law.

Author: Zachary Herz
ISBN-10: 1009629956
ISBN-13: 9781009629959
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 07/31/2025
Pages: 420
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.61lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.06d