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  • Introduction

  • Edited and translated by Brian Campbell, Queen's University Belfast
  • Book:
    The State, the Law, and the People in the Roman Empire
    Published online:
    11 December 2025
    Print publication:
    11 December 2025, pp 1-13
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  • Summary

    Roman legal texts open a view onto the life and society of the empire at its height, its management, its peoples, their activities, interrelations, and problems, and their experiences when facing the juristic power of the state and its officials. Now, the first step in the study of these texts is the identification of the sources of the law. Sources are defined first as the mechanisms by which the law was introduced and regarded as authoritative by the Romans, and second the legal works transmitted to us by writers and compilers in the ancient world, which have been translated and analysed by modern scholars. This introduction offers a brief overview of these topics and some of the issues associated with the use of legal texts in the study of Roman social, economic, and political history.