Roman Empire

But soon after they became mixed with the population of the Roman provinces they appropriated from the Imperial jurisprudence the conception of a Will, at first in part, and afterwards in all its integrity.

In the course of that long period during which our records of the Roman Empire are most incomplete, the slave-gangs of the great Roman families became transformed into the coloni, whose origin and situation constitute one of the obscurest questions in all history.

It is unnecessary to describe with any minuteness the mode of administering criminal justice under the Roman Empire, but it is to be noted that both its theory and practice have had powerful effect on modern society.

The question of the Forum before which a suit must be instituted and of the particular Law which such Forum must administer may arise (1) within the limits of a single state when divided, like the Roman empire, into municipalities with separate jurisdictions and, to a certain extent, separate laws:

apud praetorem uero uel in prouinciis apud proconsulem legatumue etiam feminae solent adoptari.

The legislative adoption of a child below the age of puberty by vote of the people was at one time prohibited, at another permitted;

There can be no serious question that, in its ultimate result, the disruption of the Roman Empire was very unfavourable to the personal and proprietary liberty of women.

The Roman law, from which the most ancient legal notions had been almost wholly expelled, was palpably the great solvent of local usage everywhere.

There is much reason to believe that the Roman Empire was the source of the influences which have led, immediately or ultimately, to the formation of highly-centralised, actively-legislating, States.

Sic litus Imperi Romani finibus inclusum, populi Romani esse Celsus existimat;

For war, treaty, or cession have made many changes, by which the rights of territory have passed to other states or sovereign princes, and the standards of different communities, whether kingdoms or commonwealths, now wave in places, which the Roman Eagle once overshadowed with his wings.

The military despotism, which had taken place in the Roman empire, and which, previously to the irruption of those conquerors, had sunk the genius of men, and destroyed every noble principle of science and virtue, was unable to resist the vigorous efforts of a free people, and Europe, as from a new epoch, rekindled her ancient spirit, and shook off the base servitude to arbitrary will and authorit …

He neither dwells on the civil wars which sealed the fall of the Republic, nor on the military expeditions which extended the frontiers of the empire;

Suetonius Tranquillus was the son of a Roman knight who commanded a legion, on the side of Otho, at the battle which decided the fate of the empire in favour of Vitellius.

From the empire and from heaven all is well.

how many cities has the threefold virtue of the present empire either produced or augmented or restored!

if the State were abolished, these associations would necessarily spring up out of its ruins, just as the nations of Europe sprang out of the ruins of the Roman Empire.