Speaker Details

Dr Gabriele   Ziethen
Director- AKSUM - Akademische Kurse, Seminare und Mitarbeiterberatung (GbR)

Presentation Abstract:

And they asked their Emperor… – Augustus and the edicts from Kyrene

The edicts from Kyrene which are preserved as epigraphic sources, signed by Emperor Augustus between 7 BCE and 4 BCE, belong to the most important sources of Roman law and administration. They helped to organize the the procedures of Roman justice and they became an additional collection of juridical sources whose article and paragraphes were followed by Roman administration over many generations. In addition these texts show the complicated system of ruling the double province Creta and Cyrenae and the system of government of the cities there, which also had a special and old Greek tradition of law and administration. The code of procedure was defined as well as the personal qualification of the jugdes and lawers. Possibly the edicts could be interpreted as a contribution of re-freshing the system of justice and law during a time when Rome had to face the difficult mode of governing double provinces in the Eastern Mediterranean where an ethnically mixed population had to be unified under the system of a commonly accepted law. The lecture will review the edicts from the perspective of history and history of law.