Ancient history in the Anglophone world has recently benefited from a turn back to law, and more importantly, to the realities of ancient legal practice, and the changing and contested role of practice in structuring ancient societies – empires in particular. It is therefore of great import to have an English translation of a recent work of L., a distinguished scholar of Roman provincial law. The work under review (originally published as Vor den Richtern Roms: berühmte Prozesse der Antike, 2007) derives from a series of lectures given to introduce students to the most visible ancient legal practitioners – judges – and to the importance of judicial decisions in the development of Roman law. To this end, L. discusses sixteen civil and criminal cases that ‘ended in trail-blazing decisions’ (p. 2) and had ‘lasting effects’ (p. 195). The cases selected range across a broad stretch of Roman history, from the trial of Horatius at the dawn of the Republic to the execution of the heretic Priscillianus in the late-fourth century a.d., and include both civil and criminal trials. In each case, L. describes the legal issue at stake, the procedure of the trial, the verdict and the subsequent implications of the decision. Each of the chapters is short, and can be read on its own by an undergraduate student.

L. is at his best in discussing trials from the Principate preserved in juristic literature (Chapters 12–14). When the emperor can effectively legislate through giving judgment, an imperial decision can certainly contribute to the body of law as a whole. The intellectual gymnastics that the jurist Paul was forced to perform to rationalise the problematic decision of Severus in the case of an orphan, for example, is well discussed in Chapter 14. Overall, these three chapters are the highlights of the book: the stakes of the cases and the legal reasoning are clearly explained, as are their consequences for subsequent legal decision-making.

The question is whether a similar model of legal change can be said to prevail under the very different political circumstances of the Republic and early Principate. Here, doubts begin to emerge. To begin with there are problems of evidence. L. treats even a doubtful historical event like the legendary trial of Horatius as if it would have followed the kinds of trial procedures evident in later periods, and as if it would have set precedents. But as these stories are often being told to illustrate ethical, rather than juridical points, one may legitimately doubt that they are free of anachronism; the trial of Horatius, in particular, seems to be a story that provides an etiology for the practice of prouocatio, rather than a case that decided its applications. The same problems emerge with the analysis of trials described by Valerius Maximus (Chapters 3 and 7): the possibly extra-legal actions of judges in these cases are de-emphasised by L. in favour of legalistic interpretations, even when the text specifies that a particular action was intended to skirt the law itself (e.g. in L.'s discussion in Chapter 7 of the anachronistic Val. Max. 8.2, where Gaius Aquilius, though ‘distinguished in his knowledge of civil law,’ none the less allows his prudentia and religio to prevail over the legal force of a stricti iuris promise). The letters of Pliny are deemed trustworthy in their details because Pliny and Trajan were ‘famous men of integrity’ (p. 129; compare L.'s attitude towards reliable sources on p. 60). More frustrating is the chapter on the ‘trial’ of Ovid (Chapter 8): here L. hypothesises that the cause of Ovid's exile was that he knew of competing plans for the succession to Augustus. Putting aside the question of whether Ovid's poetry (or his late-antique readers) can be relied upon to answer such a question, here there is no evidence whatsoever of a trial, at least in any sense that we might recognise; and we would be naïve in thinking that Augustus would have hesitated to exercise the power to punish without observing legal formalities (compare Suet. Aug. 27.4). L. admits (p. 93) that these procedures (such as they were) were ‘idiosyncratic’, but none the less imagines that the emperor would have been surrounded by his consilium.

The second difficulty is with the central thesis – that the results of these trials played an important role in contributing to the broader development of legal rules as a whole. While it is uncontroversial to argue that particular trials can leave impressions on the consciousness of audiences, to show that individual decisions had effects on the development of legal doctrine is much harder. Here L.'s arguments are exceedingly tenuous. L. implies, for example, that the acquittal of Chresimus for practising magic is a reason for the absence of (at least reported) magic trials for the next two centuries (p. 20). By a similar logic, the acquittal of Roscius by Cicero led to the restoration of the rule of law at Rome (p. 65). At best these are post-hoc arguments; at worst, they may lead students to conclude that legal doctrines necessarily developed consistently and rationally, and that the law only changed when cases were ‘reopened’ (p. 51) by a higher authority (compare p. 145, where by a similar logic L. can recognise only a single attempt to prohibit castration of slaves, tacitly rejecting the prohibition by Domitian [Suet. Dom. 7.1] in favour of a single senatus consultum [Dig. 48.8.6]).

A word about this book's appropriateness for students: at times L. engages in comparisons with modern societies. In places these are fruitful and enlightening, especially when L. brings out contrasts between legal choices that societies have made. In a few cases the comparisons are under-developed, as one might expect with a book of this length. But at times they are troubling: the offhand comparison (p. 17) of the economic success of Roman freedmen with the economic success of Jews in the nineteenth century caused this reviewer discomfort. The comparison (pp. 112–13) of the ‘outrageous’ decision of Pilate in the trial of Jesus of Nazareth with the governor of California's denial of a clemency petition in the case of Stanley ‘Tookie’ Williams, the notorious Los Angeles gang member who murdered four people at close range with a shotgun, is unfortunate.

These criticisms notwithstanding, it is indeed welcome to see directed at students a book focussed on Roman legal practice, rather than doctrine alone. One hopes that its publication will result in more engagement with the vexed question of how the Roman legal system inflected the running of an empire, and how the challenge of making the appropriate decision in the tense and contested courtroom space contributed to the Roman legal system in turn. What is more, L. is an important scholar of Roman provincial law, and making his work available to a broader audience is a welcome event. One hopes that this translation will bring a broader audience to his other, more technical work.