Cunningham, Graeme James (2018) Law, rhetoric, and science: historical narratives in Roman law. PhD thesis. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/41030/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Law, Rhetoric, and Science: Historical Narratives in Roman Law. Graeme James Cunningham LL.B. (Hons.), LL.M., M.Litt. Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. School of Law, College of Social Sciences, University of Glasgow. September 2018 Abstract. The consensus of scholarship has upheld the view that Roman law is an autonomous science. A legal system, which, due to its systematic, doctrinal principles, was able to maintain an inherent and isolated logic within the confines of its own disciplinary boundaries, excluding extra-legal influence. The establishment of legal science supposedly took place in the late second to early first century BC, when the famed Roman jurist, Quintus Mucius Scaevola pontifex, is supposed to have first treated law in a scientific way under the guidance of Greek categorical thought. As quickly as Roman lawyers came under the stimulating influence of Greek thought, they are said to have abandoned it, convinced by the initial injection of systematisation that their field required nought thereafter but the careful curation of a specialised and professional group of trained jurists. This thesis argues that the above view results from the construction (conscious and unconscious) of historical narratives rooted in nineteenth century Germany, by the so-called Historical School. Seeking solutions to legal predicaments in their own time, German jurists ascribed modern conceptions such as scientific thought onto the Roman sources in order to validate their contemporary applicability. This narrative of science became dominant and restricted the understanding of Roman legal sources to a single methodological approach. At the same time, a narrative of continuity, which linked modern jurists to their ancient Roman forebears, enshrined the idea that ancient jurists approached the law by the same means as the modern professor. This idea, along with the narrative of science, led to Roman sources being read with little regard to the context of the Roman society in which they were written, and to the preclusion of extra-legal fields, particularly rhetoric, as a potential influence on the development of law. This thesis offers a challenge to these narratives, arguing that rhetoric was central to legal development in the late Republican period, even at the time in which Quintus Mucius Scaevola pontifex was thought to have transformed the discipline into an autonomous science. This thesis challenges the origin of the narratives of science and continuity, concluding that, by reading Roman sources within the context of Roman science, Republican Roman jurists were not isolated from engagement with extra- legal fields, and indeed, to varying degrees, were knowledgeable of them, particularly rhetoric. Through the lens of the lawyer and orator, Cicero, this thesis then explores the extent to which the once excluded field of rhetoric had an influence on legal development, drawing rhetorical sources, particularly Cicero’s Topica, into a discussion of praetorian law making, to reveal that, far from autonomous, Republican Roman law developed from rhetorical argument. The key to unlocking this development is an understanding of Roman society, as socially understood Roman ideals, such as pietas and aequitas, form the basis of the rhetorical, topical ii argumentation used before the praetor to form the locus for his ratio decidendi in changing the law. This thesis concludes that rhetoric is a key element in understanding the social development of law. iii Table of Contents. Abstract. ................................................................................................................................................. ii Table of Contents. ................................................................................................................................ iv Acknowledgements. ............................................................................................................................ vii Author’s Declaration. ........................................................................................................................ viii Abbreviations. ...................................................................................................................................... ix A Note on Translations. ........................................................................................................................ x 1. Introduction. .................................................................................................................................. 1 1.1. An Outline of the Argument by Chapter. ........................................................................... 2 1.2. Methodological Issues. .......................................................................................................... 7 1.3. A Note on the Definition of “Science”. ................................................................................ 8 2. The Challenge to Dogmatism: New Methods in Roman Law. ............................................ 10 2.1. The Reception of Roman Law, The Historical School and Legal Science. .................... 11 2.1.1. The Intellectual Context of the German Historical School. .......................................... 12 2.1.2. The Romanist Historical School. .................................................................................. 15 2.2. The Dogmatic Narrative: Legal Science in Modern Scholarship. .................................. 18 2.2.1. The Narrative of Continuity. ......................................................................................... 18 2.2.2. The Narrative of Legal Science..................................................................................... 21 2.2.3. Adherence to Narratives: Dogmatic Consensus. ........................................................... 22 2.3. Narrative Origins: The Mucian Foundation Myth. ......................................................... 30 2.3.1 The Mucian Revolution: Legal Science at Rome. ........................................................ 30 2.3.2 ‘The Big Bang’: Greek Science as a Singular, Revolutionary Event. ........................... 34 2.4. The Challenge to Narratives: “Beyond Dogmatics”. ....................................................... 35 2.4.2. The Law and Society Movement. ................................................................................. 37 2.4.3. A Fresh Approach: “Beyond Dogmatics”. .................................................................... 38 2.5. Rhetoric as a New Approach to Roman Legal Argumentation. ..................................... 39 2.5.1. Rhetoric in Roman Law: A Review of Current Trends. ............................................... 39 2.6. Summary of Findings. ........................................................................................................ 44 iv 3. The Orator and Jurist Dichotomy. ............................................................................................ 45 3.1. Roman Education in Law and Rhetoric. .......................................................................... 45 3.2. Cicero as a Student, a Case Study. .................................................................................... 50 3.3. The Imposition of Professionalisation. .............................................................................. 51 3.4. Legal Practice at Rome. ...................................................................................................... 56 3.5. Summary of Findings. ........................................................................................................ 60 4. “Cicero, the Insider”. .................................................................................................................. 61 4.1. Cicero, an Orator with Knowledge of the Law. ............................................................... 63 4.2. Summary of Findings. ........................................................................................................ 77 5. Rhetoric as a Theory of Legal Reasoning. ................................................................................ 79 5.1 The Development of Rhetorical Theory at Rome in the Late Republic. ........................ 80 5.1.1. Greek Origins of Rhetoric. ............................................................................................ 80 5.1.2. Early Roman Rhetoric. .................................................................................................. 84 5.2. Rhetorica ad Herennium, De Inventione, and Early Roman Rhetorical Theory, or ‘Graecia Capta Ferum Victorem Cepit et Artes Intulit Agresti Latio’. .......................................... 87