ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that one of the less noticed conflicts of the late Roman Republic centred on who controlled ultimate legal authority, as exercised through its application in the courts. A difficulty facing the analyst of Republican law in its social setting is that there appears little scholarly consensus on the nature and extent of the influence of Greek philosophy and Greek ideas in general on Roman law. Law in the late Roman Republic was an exciting discipline, although Cicero in certain moods would have maintained that Roman jurists did their best to make it otherwise. Writing as a rhetorical theorist, Cicero cited res iudicatae as being one of the component parts of the ius civile. In the De Inventione, he defines consuetudo, customary law, as principles of law established by antiquity, without the benefit of written statute,'voluntate omnium', by general consent.
