Despite the specific topic addressed in this book, the volume also discusses several key discourses regarding the functioning of Roman law and its relationship with Roman economic contexts. This is not to say that this is not a technical book, which it is, and indeed some sections (pp. 100–13) might be a bit too specialised for readers who lack a legal background. Nevertheless, the book takes a step towards understanding law in its social context, by placing pignus and hypotheca in their socio-economic evolutionary paths, an intellectual approach that can benefit many scholars from other fields, such as economic history. V.'s decision to study the evolution of law through the focus of transactional practices (pp. 1–2) constitutes a clever choice, because in this way we can observe how law worked in practice and gain an insight into the practitioners’ economic activities.
The book starts with an introduction in which V. lays out the subject of inquiry, and it is followed by twelve chapters, of which the first three are devoted to analysing the existing rapports between law and economy in the Roman world as well as the mechanisms of legal evolution. The remainder of the book describes the historical steps by which pignus and hypotheca evolved until late antiquity, which allows readers to understand how the right of pledge evolved from a single possessory pledge over a specific physical thing to a highly versatile security interest that could be granted multiple times over the same asset, a non-possessory pledge, over receivables, and even over an entire fluctuating patrimony. The volume concludes with a chapter in which V. explains the adaptability of these legal tools. The book includes an appendix explaining some texts concerning the actio Serviana's functioning, which allowed contracting parties to adjust security interests to their economic needs.
V. bases the research on a wide variety of documentary and literary sources, since pignus and hypotheca are well documented in comparison with other legal instruments used for economic purposes (e.g. contracts of sale or letting and hiring). However, regarding material evidence, even though some finds have allowed archaeologists to detect the presence of grain (that could be associated with mutuum or loan for consumption), for example on the Woerden wreck, Netherlands, 170–175 ce (A. Parker, Ancient Shipwrecks of the Mediterranean and the Roman Provinces [1992], p. 452), or coin hoards on board of ships (in relation with pecunia traiectitia), for example on the Camarina wrecks (see G. Purpura, AUPA 42 [1995], 471), the current state of the evidence is not sufficient to link these material remains with legal forms of loans and credit.
The socio-economic reading of the sources by V. is appreciated, such as, for example, the interesting case of Cato's pledges recorded in the De agricultura (pp. 88–100), of which V. underlines that ‘Cato did not create new law but relied on existing legal practices which originated in an earlier period’ (p. 89). The point here is that the use of standard contracts or templates, together with the employment of model-bias imitation (p. 43), were key for the transmission and evolution of transactional practices. This is an important point to be made, which not only explains the phenomena illustrated in Cato's pledges (pp. 89–93), but also links with previous points from Chapter 2 (mechanisms of legal evolution, esp. pp. 41–4), but also with practices reflected in documents such as TPSulp 51 and 52 (p. 139).
The book includes a wide variety of elements shaping pignus and hypotheca through history, including the different elements that help overcome risks and guarantee the fulfilment of an obligation (e.g. to pay for a purchase, to satisfy a debt), such as forfeiture or license to sell (pp. 128–73). In terms of the pledge's enforcement, a connection with the work of T. Terpstra would have been useful (Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean. Private Order and Public Institutions [2019], pp. 135–50), as this study illustrates, also using the Sulpicii archive, the sorts of tools employed by transactional parties who lacked networks of personal trust. The latter may have connected well with the previous assertion that ‘the Roman law of real security may have facilitated impersonal exchange in financial transactions and may thus have contributed to economic growth in the Roman empire’ (p. 36). Indeed, although the role of trust can be clearly appreciated in the Digest's sources from Scaevola (p. 77) or Pomponius (p. 197), V. concentrates on the institutional side of pignus and hypotheca, leaving these questions aside.
Another controversial topic that V. does not address in detail is that of insurance, which is important regarding pignus and hypotheca, as these tools are used to mitigate risks, but perhaps giving more attention to it would have derailed the main discussion of the book (which is rich in itself). Notwithstanding that, the assertion regarding maritime loans that ‘the maritime loan not only financed this hazardous enterprise but also functioned as insurance. This is because a maritime loan only had to be repaid if the financed cargo arrived safely and in good time at its port of destination’ (p. 187) poses an important question, that is to lay out what can be defined as ‘insurance’. If we use the current understanding of the term, insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage or injury. Instead, in a maritime loan, in the event of a loss, the affected party does not have the obligation to pay anything, and the lender will obtain their benefits on the high rates of interest charged to the borrower in case of success. It seems to this reviewer that the phenomena indicated here are the opposite of the current understanding of insurance; thus, perhaps, we should either abandon the connection between loan, pledges and insurance or redefine the notion of insurance for the Roman context.
The final chapter brings together the different elements described in the volume with other historical and economical events, to conclude that it is plausible to think that the Roman law of real security adapted to economic needs and contributed to economic growth. The latter needs to be understood in relation to what the jurists considered when proposing legal solutions to economic phenomena, that is, that these were juridically consistent. This assertion is key, because it underlines the kaleidoscopic nature of law and the economy, encouraging readers to consider different angles when analysing commercial practices (see for example the case from pp. 309–10). In addition, this perception targets previous assertions that characterised the economy in a rigid way (e.g. pp. 29–31), as well as law as a phenomenon disentangled from the society that produced it (see A. Watson's theory, pp. 8–9).
V.'s book is a comprehensive and necessary work on a topic that has been widely studied in the field of Roman law, but that desperately needed revision bearing in mind the different socio-economic contexts in which these legal instruments were used. By placing the transactional practices at the centre of the discussion, V. manages to bring the technical legal topic of pledges into the individual's sphere of commercial practice. In this way, the book will be helpful for legal historians interested in economic matters, but will also provide important insights for scholars from other fields such as ancient history or Classics about the nature of Roman law and how it functioned in commercial and economic contexts.
