While the Greeks had orators, the Romans developed a unique class of legal experts known as jurists. These were not courtroom lawyers but brilliant legal scholars who devoted their lives to the science of interpreting the law. Their opinions, debates, and writings formed the backbone of Rome’s sophisticated legal system.
This episode explores the world of the great Roman jurists, figures like Gaius, Ulpian, and Papinian. We examine how they developed law through interpretation, advising praetors on their edicts and offering legal opinions to private citizens. They were the masters of legal reasoning, creating principles and distinctions that could be applied to any conceivable case. Their work elevated Roman law from a simple set of rules to a complex, flexible, and enduring intellectual system.
The writings of these jurists were so influential that they were later collected and codified in Justinian's Digest, becoming the foundation of Western civil law. The story of the jurists is the story of how Rome created a legal science that would outlast the empire itself. They were the anonymous architects of a legal tradition that continues to shape our world today.
