This book constitutes a substantial revision of the original Italian version and analyses Rome's institutional history from pre-foundation to the end of the Severan period. C.C. rejects the imposition on antiquity of modern ideas of the ‘state’, which separates rulers from ruled, preferring the term ‘commonwealth’, on the grounds that it evokes ‘the complex and elusive combination of communitarian aspects with a hierarchical structuring of the social order’ (p. xxiii). Power and the law, C.C. suggests, ‘are the two reference points, whose complex interaction shaped the history of Rome’. Law had the advantage of evolving, at least initially, independently of the ‘city's governing institutions', before finally merging with the ‘sovereign power’ of government, a process well under way by the late-third century and completed by Justinian.

Few would quarrel with C.C.'s reservations over the term ‘state’ or ‘city-state’, yet much of his account presupposes some kind of separation of ‘government’ and governmental ‘institutions’, from those who were governed. If C.C. is to argue that the Roman res publica, that entity ‘owned’, as Cicero put it (Rep. 1.39), by the populus Romanus, was indeed structured in line with communitarian values, more explanation is needed of where the ‘institutions’ of the res publica and the ‘Roman constitution’ were located between the requirements of ‘community’ and the maintenance, by the senatorial aristocracy, of the social hierarchy through the omnipresent operation of patronage and amicitia. ‘Power’ too is problematic. The Romans had four words (at least) for ‘power’ (potestas, imperium, auctoritas, potentia), and their awareness of the difference between, say, legal power (as in patria potestas) and the entitlement to issue orders to others (imperium) forms a significant part of that social context in which Romans' notions of power, and the institutions which expressed it, were embedded. C.C.'s view appears to be that ‘power’, as he sees it, was what was exercised by Rome's institutions of government, by contrast with law, which for centuries evolved independently. This thesis is tenable, but only if closer attention is paid to the implications of having a ‘government’ and ‘governmental institutions’ without a state and the ability of individuals to affect the workings of governmental ‘institutions’ through networking and the judicious distribution of beneficia – which included the making of law (for Iuventius Celsus’ description of a section of the Lex Pompeia for Bithynia as a beneficium, see Digest 50.1.1.2).

C.C. is a distinguished Professor of Law with a long-standing interest in the social sciences and ancient history, and this volume is a courageous attempt at an interdisciplinary approach. The book's stated aim is to explain how ancient institutions worked in practice, rather than concentrating on ‘issues of status and definition’. His theme, the interaction of law and power, is developed in eighteen narrative chapters, starting with the ‘genesis of a political community’, and ending the ‘long journey’ with Diocletian and Justinian. The divisions of material are conventional: four chapters on origins and the Early Republic, five on the Republic's ‘Golden Age’, a questionable label perhaps for those who lived through those turbulent times, three on the end of the Republic (‘An Ambiguous Revolution’) and five, plus the conclusion, on the ‘Universal Empire’ of Augustus and his successors.

C.C. is aware that there are problems of source interpretation, especially in the construction of the early history of Rome. However, he does not recognise the full extent of uncertainty and dispute. This lack is not helped by the choice largely to avoid footnotes and referencing in the text, which permits assertions to go unchallenged, because of the absence of documentation, and controversies to go unacknowledged. For example, the claim (p. 30) that the College of Pontiffs were central to the king's role as a lawgiver and to the subsequent development of rules of conduct for individuals, families and gentes is not universally accepted, even by C.C.'s fellow-lawyers. On the creation of the Twelve Tables, C.C. does appear (p. 59) to accept that later controversies affected the depiction of Appius Claudius, the leader of both panels of decemviri, as a tyrant. Yet he fails to spot that Livy's narrative of Appius' rise and fall, with its emphasis on the pivotal issue of provocatio, provides the perfect example of how institutions are affected, and their representation distorted, by their socio-political and cultural contexts.

C.C.'s reading of the history is also controversial. He has no hesitation in ascribing the credit for some developments to ‘great men’, and clearly includes Caesar among their number, as the architect of ‘Rome's new political reality’ (p. 221). But while many would agree that the institutions of the res publica were no longer fit for purpose, Caesar's choices were both determined and constrained by his context, and his adoption of the perpetual dictatorship in February 44, which led directly to his assassination, may have been a matter of necessity not choice. Nor was he as original a reformer as C.C. claims: for example, what C.C. sees as the ‘intellectual boldness' of Caesar's alleged project of codifying the ius civile appears less radical, when we recall Cicero's idea, already canvassed ten years earlier, of structuring the ius civile as a teachable system of law.

C.C.'s account has the merit of not separating the ‘history’ from the evolution of law and legal process, but a more nuanced appreciation is needed of the extent to which the working of institutions was at the mercy of multiple factors. The account of Augustus' restructuring of government is the traditional one of listing the offices accumulated by the princeps, with a nod in the direction of other institutions, the Senate and the role within the imperial system of the equites and freedmen. The question of why Augustus used the methods he did and not others is not addressed and, despite some coverage of what was old and new and acknowledgement of the presence of trial and error, insufficient emphasis is laid on the extent to which Augustus' strategy was a continuation of the deliberate attempts by previous dynasts under the Republic to assert personal dominance through the creation of parallel institutions to those of the res publica, based on the anomalous holding of multiple magistracies and powers, along with wealth, patronage (including the granting of citizenship, building and public entertainments) and military glory. Moreover, we meet again an uncritical attitude to a tendentious source, this time Pomponius (also not referenced): the assertion (p. 320) that Augustus conferred on favoured jurists the ius respondendi ex auctoritae principis is not supported by contemporary sources and the reform may well be due to Hadrian.

Law and power can work together, or they can pull in opposite directions, depending on how power is defined and exercised. With regard to the power exercised by institutions of government, law will affect those institutions, even when it evolves independently, and the extent of the ‘independence’ of law and lawmakers under the Republic is open to question, given that those who made and interpreted the law were the same senatorial aristocrats who staffed and controlled what passed for the Roman government. And one major issue is not addressed. Between the rule-based culture of law and the socially essential but entirely arbitrary power of patronage, allegations of corruption (not listed in C.C.'s index), real or imagined, multiplied, a problem which even emperors, as both lawgivers and patrons, could not ignore.