This book provides a fresh and original approach to the critical and contextual appreciation of Roman law and culture.

The great 'codes', such as those of Theodosius and Justinian, have rightly assumed a canonical status in the reception of Roman law. But they are not the only sources of this law. Law finds various expression in any culture, in essays, treatises, and testaments, plays, poems and novels. This book investigates this 'other' writing of Roman law. In the process it introduces the reader to a variety of Roman orators, poets and political writers, from Cicero and Seneca to Ovid and Apuleius, Plautus and Pliny. It also introduces the reader to a variety of areas of Roman law, from matters of governance and public philosophy to the politics of family and sexuality, the regulation of religion, the proscription of sorcery and the protection of the consumer. And finally, it introduces the reader to all of the peculiarities of Roman law too, the kind with which the past always teases the present.

Why did Cicero's tongue end up nailed to a board in the forum in Rome?
What role did Seneca play in the murder of Nero's mother? What did Ovid see, and why did it earn the wrath of his emperor?
What magic did the orator Apuleius possess, and how did he use it?
And what does the spread of Christianity owe to the younger Pliny?

These are just a few of the collateral questions which the reader is invited to ponder in this fresh and exciting engagement with one of the most intriguing, and influential, legal systems in world history.