Princeps Legibus Solutus Est an Non? Cultures of Legality in the Roman Empire

The position of the Roman emperor presents a paradox for the application of the concept of the ‘rule of law’ to imperial Rome. On the one hand, the emperor made and stood above the law, and was expected to ameliorate the harshness of the law’s strict application: the antithesis of most notions of the rule of law; on the other, the creation of the principate was seen as a restoration of legal order. This chapter argues that one way to understand the paradox is to explore the constraints on the emperor’s legal absolutism imposed by ‘cultures of legality’ in the Roman world: expectations of how lawmakers and administrators (including the emperor) ought to behave that were shared by these parties as well as imperial subjects in the multi-legal world of the Roman empire. These ‘cultures’ developed in a discursive process evidenced in various legal contexts and expressions of ideals by subject, administrator, and emperor. Although there are multiple examples where these cultures provided only an erratic constraint, nonetheless, it was generally agreed by subject and sovereign alike that emperors ought to observe the laws, although technically exempt from them.