Ancient Roman Laws Essay -- Roman History

Ancient Roman Laws Although the history of Rome's regal period is based in large part on legend, and was so in antiquity, tradition was strong, and many of Rome's laws and customs, committed to writing much later, have their roots in the distant past. Ancient Rome had many different types of law in government. Out of all of the ancient Roman laws, the Julian Marriage laws, the laws of the kings, and the Justinian Codes, are some of them. The Julian Marriage laws were very specific and determined. Emperor Augustus notice social problems at Rome, and he detected that extravagance and adultery were very common in the Roman Government. In the upper classes, marriages varied; and when people did marry, they didn‘t create children. After this issue was found, Augustus brought both the morals and the numbers of the upper classes in Rome together by increasing the population of native Italians in Italy. He did this by creating laws to encourage marriage and having children, and started laws to make the act of adultery a crime. Some of the laws created by Augustus included that men must marry. This law was to help the Roman Government gain a bigger population from the children of all the married couples. To enforce this law, he gave what was called prizes for having children and marrying. Although they were based on marriage, the major role in this law was adultery. These prizes were mainly tax reductions and awards. Since more males existed than females among the nobility, he allowed anyone that had wanted to marry freedwomen, and said that births of children in these such marriages would be legal and rightful. He made new laws and changed some of the old ones, for example, the sumptuary law. Laws like the sumptuary law were on a basis of adultery. There were many consequences of adultery in the Roman Empire. These consequences were mainly involved with killings. One of the laws stated that a husband who finds his wife in adultery can only kill the adulterer when he catches him in his own house. Another law concluded that a husband cannot kill anyone in adultery except persons who are well-known and prostitutes, including slaves. His wife, however, is liable and he is forbidden to kill her. Adultery also restricted killings for adultery, for example; if a son under h is fathers power, should surprise his daughter in the act of adultery, the law says that h... ...he Digest. The Institutione was a book that was mainly copied from the institutes of Gaius. It was considered beginners text book and a book of statutes. Most of the rules in this textbook/book of statutes became laws in many countries. The Pandectae was a collection of fragments from academic papers. All of its legal opinions were given legal force, just like the Institutione had given the legal force. The Codex and the Digest wasn’t as complicated as the Institutione and the Pandectae but was the most important out of the four. The Codex was just mainly a collection of imperial statutes, and the Digest was basically a casebook covering many trials and decisions. In conclusion, many Ancient Roman laws have been the origin of the laws we find in our society. Other laws in the Ancient Rome period have been the origin of other countries too. All of these laws have helped create our laws in America by looking at mistakes and great ideas of the Ancient Roman government. The Roman Laws are thought as legend, but some still think of it as realistic. You could compare the Justinian Codes greatly to our three branches of government, when there were four books. All the powers split up.