The field of Roman law has transformed in recent years. Legal historiography has turned away from doctrinal study and towards more broadly legible or traditional histories, and Romanists have largely followed suit—this post-doctrinal turn looks different in different national traditions, but it is necessary context for Nasti’s contribution to the renaissance. Anglo-Americans have done transformative work at the intersection of Roman legal archives and ‘law and society’ scholarship; [1] by contrast, much of the most exciting Continental material—discussed below—has focused on the philosophical and literary aspects of Roman legal writing. This movement understands the juristic treatises excerpted in Justinian’s Digest as literary products, in implicit dialogue with broader trends in technical writing and in the construction of expertise.
Another critical difference between the two schools is the form that their scholarship takes. While Continental legal scholars and historians have produced monographic studies of Roman legal rhetoric,[2] some of the most influential treatments of Roman juristic writing are coming out as commentaries and palingenesiai under the aegis of the Scriptores Iuris Romani project. SIR publishes fragments of given juristic works organized by probable original order and translated into Italian, accompanied by extensive commentary on both individual fragments and on the broader significance of the particular author/work. Different authors survive to different degrees and get different treatment, but SIR texts blend commentary with more traditional argument in order to rebuild texts.
Nasti’s new reconstruction of Pomponius’ Enchiridion fits the SIR model, and accordingly might seem odd to readers unfamiliar with that model. While Nasti presents the project as a reconstruction, reordering, and translation of Pomponius, her actual goals are much broader; that reconstruction/reordering/translation does not begin in earnest until about 80% of the way through the text, and the earlier material only prefaces that work in a loose sense. Nasti has written an ambitious monograph, which entirely reframes Pomponius and his unique contribution to Roman legal science, and included a textual apparatus and translation at the end.
That monograph is sorely needed. Even a cursory read of the Digest makes it clear that Pomponius is an odd duck—Justinian’s compilers use him for very different purposes than they do other excerpted authors, and his argumentation is more explicitly literary and explicitly Hellenizing than that of his neighbors—but our lack of information about the author and work has made it hard to theorize that difference. Nasti fills the gap, drawing out Pomponius’ literary influences and suggesting an innovative structure for the Enchiridion based on Pomponius’ cosmopolitan outlook and particular interest in administration outside Italy; she argues that Pomponius wrote a new kind of legal manual for a new kind of empire that needed new kinds of law.
The argument rests on traditional legal philology, but also on inspired comparative readings. Nasti draws out some surprising influences and demonstrates them convincingly; in particular, Nasti reads the Enchiridion in the context not only of Cicero, but also of diverse Greek intellectual traditions. These comparisons rest on the structure of the Enchiridion more than on its specific claims and language, and that focus helps Nasti work around the greatest obstacle to her project: the sheer lack of evidence. Even scattered fragments of the Enchiridion can still tell us something about how Pomponius put together his work, and that compositional process is easier for us to recreate than the lost arguments and ideas that Pomponius composed. Nasti’s final reconstruction rests heavily on comparative arguments, since she assumes (plausibly) that the Enchiridion influenced later and better-preserved isagogic texts like Ulpian’s Institutiones. Nasti reconstructs the Enchiridion as mixing the treatments of private law that we see in other Classical jurists with detailed guides to provincial legal administration and finally with the more historical material that makes up the bulk of Pomponius’ presence in the Digest (namely the long fragment preserved at D.1.2.2).
Now, for the structure of Nasti’s own work. Her first chapter focuses on basic preliminary questions about Pomponius and the Enchiridion, which are largely unsettled. She begins with the late antique transmission of the Enchiridion, which survives in two forms—some Digest fragments refer to libri duo enchiridiii, and others to a liber singularis. Nasti takes this as pointing to a messy process of epitomation, before proceeding to questions of dating. Nasti skews quite late and places the Enchiridion under Pius or the Diui Fratres.
From here on out, Nasti follows the throughline of D.1.2. Her second chapter focuses on Pomponius’ prefatory material, the origo et processus iuris; this reading chiefly consists of placing Pomponius into dialogue with other Classical authors, but also some claims about Pomponius’ own project. In particular Nasti takes Pomponius’ focus on legal institutions as a major innovation in Roman jurisprudence. Nasti then addresses Pomponius’ treatment of early Roman history and development of the magistracies at D.1.2.2.26–34, using idiosyncratic parts of Pomponius’ account to demonstrate his reliance on sources like Dionysus of Halicarnassus.
Nasti’s next chapter, on the successio auctorum preserved at D.1.2.2.35–53, contains one of the book’s most provocative arguments: that when Pomponius claimed that Publius Mucius, Brutus, and Manilius “founded the civil law” (D.1.2.2.39: fundaverunt ius civile) he meant that they were the first to approach law as something teachable and transmissible, and accordingly that law only takes on the character of ius when it can be publicly shared. The argument is probable, if not necessarily supported by the text itself, and solves a vexing problem in Pomponius’ history. From there Nasti proceeds to the more traditionally ‘legal’ portions of the Enchiridion preserved in other fragments, which she argues are unusually concerned with questions of provincial administration and thus contemplate a more cosmopolitan, pan-Mediterranean audience than we typically imagine for juristic work. This pan-Mediterranean outlook even informs Pomponius’ definitions of terms, found at D.50.16.239; Nasti argues that Pomponius’ focus on terminology related to travel and provincial life (like incola and advena) reveals the centrality of the provinces in Pomponius’ legal imagination. Finally, Nasti explains the reasoning behind her reconstruction of the Enchiridion (as mentioned above, mostly through analogy with later isagogic texts) and provides an arrangement and translation of surviving fragments.
An astute reader may have noticed a running theme by now. Nasti has built a brilliant edifice on six surviving fragments,[3] but we just don’t have very much of the Enchiridion, and accordingly any attempt to talk about it will necessarily involve speculation. Nasti is no exception, and is commendably forthright about the probabilistic nature of her arguments. But the book as a whole can take on the character of an educated guess. Nasti’s claims are clearly explained throughout, and grounded in the material that we have; I trust her reasoning, and if someone cornered me at a party and demanded to know what the Enchiridion was like I would follow Nasti as offering the likeliest account. But I am not as certain of her claims as I would like to be after reading something this carefully argued, because the state of Pomponius’ text makes certainty impossible. Reconstruction is not for the faint of heart.
Even if I am not entirely confident in all of Nasti’s points, however, I can confidently recommend the book that makes them. It is immensely learned and reflects the best evidence we have on an important, obscure chapter in the history of the Roman jurists. Like all SIR books it is a godsend in the classroom, and will be indispensable for anyone researching Pomponius going forward. Nasti has defined this corner of the Digest for decades to come.
Notes
[1] E.g., Clifford Ando, Imperial ideology and provincial loyalty in the Roman Empire, University of California Press, 2000; Ari Z. Bryen, Violence in Roman Egypt: A Study in Legal Interpretation, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013; Kimberley Czajkowski, Localized Law: The Babatha and Salome Komaise Archives, Oxford University Press, 2017; Caroline Humfress, Orthodoxy and the courts in late antiquity, Oxford University Press, 2007.
[2] E.g., Ulrike Babusiaux, Papinians Quaestiones, Beck, 2014; Elsemiekke Dalder; De rechtspraakverzamelingen van Julius Paulus, 2018. Dario Mantovani, Les juristes écrivains de la Rome antique, Les Belles Lettres, 2018; Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner, Reagieren und Gestalten, C.H. Beck, 2008.
[3] In addition to D.1.2.2 the Enchiridion is excerpted at D.1.1.2, D.26.1.13, D.38.10.8,D.46.3.107, and D.50.16.239.