Spaces of Justice in the Roman World

Despite the crucial role played by both law and architecture in ancient Rome, the Romans never developed a type of building that was specifically and exclusively reserved for the administration of justice: courthouses did not exist in Roman antiquity. The present volume addresses this apparent paradox by investigating the spatial settings of Roman judicial practices from a variety of perspectives. Scholars of law, topography, architecture, political history, and literature concur in putting Roman judicature back into its concrete physical context, exploring how the exercise of law interacted with the environment in which it took place, and how the spaces charactarized by this interaction were perceived by the ancients themselves. The result is a fresh view on a key aspect of Roman culture.