Trials in the Late Roman Republic, 149 B.C.to 50 B.C.

ecords of criminal and civil trials offer scholars a wealth of information about legal practices and principles, social history, and the conventions of rhetoric. For Roman historians court records as we know them today do not exist. To fill that gap Michael C. Alexander has tabulated, as exhaustively as possible, the scattered information available about the 391 known trials, criminal and civil, dating from the last century of the Roman Republic (149 BC to 50 BC).

For each case Alexander provides as many pieces of legal data as are available, including wherever possible the date of the trial, the charge, the verdict, and the names of all involved: defendant, defense speaker, prosecutor or plaintiff, presiding magistrate, jurors, and witnesses. The entry for each trial also contains citations of relevant ancient sources and modern scholarship. Footnotes make the reader aware of any dubious or controversial points which relate to the formal aspects of the trial. Also included are a general index of names, plus separate indexes by role, and an index of procedures.

For Roman historians and scholars in the fields of Roman law and Latin rhetoric, this volume is an invaluable reference work for the study of the judicial system of ancient Rome in the last one hundred years of the Republic.