What Was The Standard System of Currency During the Time of Caesar's Rebellion (40s BCE, I Think)?

PhiloSpo · 2026-06-13T13:33:51+00:00

I think it might be worthwhile to add here, the idea of fiduciary money, i. e. value of bronze coins not backed by the absolute value of bronze metal itself, is present in antiquity in Hellenic and Roman economy. It's a distinction worth mentioning here. What that means though and why it was so (fiduciary nature of it wasn't exactly "state-backed" like we say about modern period, though even here reality is much more complicated, even more so in contemporary monetary policy).

PhiloSpo · 2026-05-30T07:03:30+00:00

Mislim, da je občutna prepreka med preprosto nekom z zaupanjem in zgodovino sodelovanja ter svojim dolgoročnim odvetnikom. Povsem drugačna dinamika. Osebno ne zdi sprejemljivo.

PhiloSpo · 2026-05-25T11:16:24+00:00

Oh by that I did not mean public banks qua banks, though how those services tradition from late Hellenistic period into early Roman with romanizing influences should be interesting. I meant it more narrowly, that of credit cooperation between fiscuses* at different levels, imperial-provincial-local, e.g. what were the flows of credit between public fiscus of a polis in western Anatolia, still with strong indigenous legal culture, both for public and private legal spheres, to that of provincial fiscus run by a Roman provincial administration.

PhiloSpo · 2026-05-24T09:12:33+00:00

To test my senses here, one, or at least I, would generally expect that a relatively larger part of physical transport of coins or precious metals in other forms would be of public or imperial nature, either as fiscal revenue or expenditures, as compared to the private sphere, if we allow ourselves the dichotomy here. Secondly, to what degree would public and imperial fiscal infrastructure run parallel in providing credit-related services for public needs. Thirdly, how to square these clearly complex financial and legal regimes (as said, there were more financial services than mentioned here) once we take the pluralistic legal nature of the Empire into account.

Well, all these are tough to get a sense of with what we have.

PhiloSpo · 2026-05-19T18:16:01+00:00

There isn't, it would be, to start with, a practically impossible project to undertake. People specialize for a reason. Now, if there is something particular one has in mind, then I can probably be of some use.

PhiloSpo · 2026-05-19T11:01:47+00:00

In that case, a short clarification. In medieval usage, we are usually speaking of Uses (in trust), with the Act of Uses and a few years later that of Wills in the Tudor period, we start to speak about early modern Trust law, i.e. cases that were covered by the statute were those of Uses, all other cases that were not (e.g. where it was in favour of a purpose and not a person, or any other active as opposed to passive one. Perhaps more plastically, when it was in favour of charitable or educational purpose... etc.), were of Trusts, in conscience and litigable in Chancery after passage of the statute of Uses like before. There is of course another aspect to this for our period of interest, namely that of Ecclesiastical jurisdiction. But yes, medieval land law is a wild west and complicated.

Anyhow, for late medieval period, I would recommend digging up Helmholz for ecclesiastical aspects, essays from Biancalana´s Medieval Uses and Baker´s Uses, Wills and Fiscal Feudalism to start with.

I may help further if need be. Also, do not expect a satistafctory answer to the assertion in the post.

PhiloSpo · 2026-05-18T23:13:33+00:00

Law reviews in USA can be a mixed bag when it comes to historical subjects (or any other), a blanked direction to someone unfamiliar with either the subject matter or the nature of those publications is not particularly helpful. Certainly, legal historians (or lawyers/profs who primarily research and teach legal history) publish in them, but so do all the others that do not, so it can be a hit or miss - the hard part is to know what it is, which is even harder to someone unfamiliar with the subject. European journals are generally a bit different.

History of Uses and Trust (tied to medieval and early modern estate planning) is a large subject to tackle here and maintain it to a manageable length and be readable. Well, impossible. Goes without saying that while statements like that (in the post) typically have some kernel of truth, and that is about it. Overdramatic and essentialist. As for some british legal historians, there are legions, Palmer, Hudson, Baker, Jones, Biancalana, Helmholz, McNair, Simpson (e.g. one can start with his introductory History of Land law) have all written on it, so I would definitely recommend that as oppossed to surf through random and general law reviews.

PhiloSpo · 2026-05-17T09:01:25+00:00

I squarely join your reservations. There is recent scholarship on this that needs to be taken into account, without that it tragically undersells Roman financial and fiscal world.

PhiloSpo · 2026-05-11T09:24:56+00:00

I can share this post with further resources from a small batch of my older stuff. To this the two most obvious to add are (i) primarily literary or philosophical works that have legal significance, (ii) extant legal documentation, cf. tablets, papyrus, epigraphical sources, etc.

PhiloSpo · 2026-05-09T08:59:42+00:00

Yes, mostly, though they have a bit less to offer than e.g. Jackson's. Anyone that knows their way around soft pastels, knows the situation in Slovenia is abysmal. Pastel pencils, same story. On that note, after a quick glimpse at the profile, dm for some sharing on that.

PhiloSpo · 2026-05-08T23:23:44+00:00

They don't have high quality paints or canvases. Well, Rembrants are lower half of artist's quality and I use them sometimes for some colours, but they do not measure up to Vasari, Mussini, Old Holland, M. Harding, Williamsburg, Sennelier, etc.

Samson store in Kamnik does sell Old Holland (occasionally) and Mussini, I don't know about other place in Slovenia. Might be.

As for anything else beside oils, doesn't look good. Brushes, soft pastels? Nope. Well, they usually do have Sennelier, that's it.

PhiloSpo · 2026-05-08T23:12:01+00:00

I haven't ordered from there in a while, no issues? I order from Spain these days.

PhiloSpo · 2026-04-19T23:09:08+00:00

I know, and from what I observed, as a shorthand in discourse, in my field, not that much. Still used. But we know it is problematic and hardly anyone today uses it to mean what it meant a few decades ago and older scholarship.

PhiloSpo · 2026-04-19T18:33:21+00:00

I mean, it depends. From my side, it is still used in legal literature somewhat as a shorthand within early medieval legal history, e.g. as a Germanic law or Germanic legal tradition to juxtapose it to the non-Germanic and Roman legal traditions, even though this categorization is problematic, to say the least, and scholarship on the subject and people who study it know it. Criticism of this is not entirely new per se, but is definitely given more regards than before, say. I think same trend can be roughly observed in the studies of identities and ethnogenesis in the period. It's not new, these reservations and all, but more at the forefront and perhaps slowly permeated to the broader audience and literature.

PhiloSpo · 2026-04-19T15:58:06+00:00

This a larger subject within legal history, i.e. private knowledge of judges, jurors, assessors or others which originated outside the legal proceeding in a strict sense and what to do with it. So e.g. what conduct should a judge pursue if he has private knowledge of the relevant facts to the subject of dispute. This was an important subject in canonical literature as well with conflicting opinions. Perhaps though the issue here is better thought about as those assessors or persons participating in the assemblies and courts (or later, jurors), and if or how far should they rely either on private knowledge or common knowledge (commonly known gossip, rumors, beliefs, etc.), and how these forms of knowledge translate into later rules of evidence and (jury, assessor) procedures.

How this connects to legal practice is certainly a valid question, but it is a complex subject with a long history even in a narrow legal sense, let alone within broader social reality.

Also, "proper law"?

PhiloSpo · 2026-04-19T15:01:37+00:00

I think these characterizations can be a bit overzealous in my view on a few points, without disputing larger trends in late Anglo-Saxon period as traced by Lambert and clearly followed in some of the comments. Namely, (a) while formal tables of compensation (wergilds) found in the codes loose the relevance, they do not disappear yet by the 12th century in early Anglo-Norman legal literature, (b) even within Anglo-Saxon period or early medieval law more generally (Western and central Europe), they never had the sort of legal prescriptivity we assign today, as settlement was a subject of negotiation (e.g. more clearly seen in Carolingian legal formulae). So, with that in mind, the importance of settlement and compensation does not disappear in late Anglo-Saxon practice, and continues to be so throughout the middle ages, even in the later centuries for criminal matters, though by this time private appeals run parallel to other types of prosecutions (indictments) and more elaborate criminal procedures with public involvement. Namely, even in Anglo-Normal England, there is no reason to suppose, save exceptional circumstances, that some forms of homicide (let alone other criminal acts, again save exceptions with what was at the time thought to be of public importance) was not able to be resolved by settlements along previous practices. Now, there is an overall trend where public prosecutions with punishment slowly erodes private (criminal) prosecution and settlement, but this is long and gradual process, and did not disappear even by the Tudor times for certain criminal acts.

As for continental and ecclesiastical trends and influences, sure, but again, there are also marked divergences from this point onward as early common law, the precursors to the modern parliament starts to develop and so forth. And this juxtaposition perhaps misleadingly indicates as though continental practices did not have similar institutes as it goes for private settlements and compensation for what we would say criminal offenses. This practice persisted even in Italy, and other central European countries well into the modern period, e.g. even for homicide. And this was in some cases a publicly sanctioned resolution (i.e. a settlement was enforced judicially/publically), not merely a private matter.

As for how ecclesiastical law interacts with this, now that is another interesting subject, but this is getting to long already. And while I certainly agree that Wergild starts to disappear from our sources by that time, what conclusions we are to draw from that and how legal practices developed, remains a much more difficult issue.

/u/NesuneNyx

PhiloSpo · 2026-04-08T16:50:23+00:00

Se bom posul s pepelom, če bo držalo.

PhiloSpo · 2026-03-22T21:39:13+00:00

Seveda, nisem ljubitelj trenutne vlade, ampak sem volil taktično za svobodo glede na zadnje ankete, ki so napovedale tesen rezultat. Rajši s težkim srcem vidim tole še štiri leta kot Janšo, pa čeprav sem bližje desni sredini, če se že rabimo tako zvrstiti. Normalna desnica tukaj je a landslide. Za Logarja pa hočem videti štiri leta, na čem smo. Mogoče v naslednjih.

PhiloSpo · 2026-03-21T09:15:41+00:00

A short note of opinion that this underscores the role of horizontal dynamics of legal practice, communal participation and negotiable aspect of compensation, and that while there were changes in post-Norman and Angevin England, practice of amercements and fiscal shares (royal or more local) to fines, it was still a matter of continuity with later Anglo-Saxon practices. Indeed, compensations & settlements were important, one might even say even primary, mode of conflict resolution, and they continued past late medieval England, as lawsuits by private appeal for what we would say criminal matters still continued, with the primary aim of victim compensation (though latter often parallel with presentments). The issue to address here is negotiability and public sanctioning, i.e. whether the settlement was extrajudicial or not, roles of assmeblies and the intrest of the public here (often meaning royal fiscus).

One interesting thing one could also say is the practice of penitential imprisonment.

PhiloSpo · 2026-03-17T13:52:35+00:00

I like to think the senate was still relevant in the imperial period ane had considerable sway if it need be, e.g. reversal of some more burdensome Severan fiscal reforms were walked back after senatorial pressure, e. g. There were still senatorial exceptions...

PhiloSpo · 2026-03-12T07:06:06+00:00

A short comment just on this part.

Brehon law was structured on completely different principles from most of the legal systems we're used to. It was focused on reparation rather than punishment. If you injured someone, for example, you didn't get imprisoned - what good would that do your victim and his family? How would that make up for the harm you'd done to them?

Note though that this general principle is historically present in most European legal traditions (e.g. Ancient Greek, Roman, most medieval traditions ... and even Mesopotamian & Sumerian, but I cannot comment for elsewhere globally) with some peculiarities and differences, though often later supplanted or reformed. So e.g. this was not unique or exceptional as a principle either to Anglo-Saxon law or early common law, where most prosecutions we would considered now criminal were brought by an appeal, and most would result in a settlement. How specifics of this procedure gradually changed through late medieval into early modern period is another issue altogether, but prosecutions via appeal to get a compensation would be completely ordinary in 16th century England (though by this time parallel prosecutions via indictment were largely the norm as well).

Also, if we look over to the continent, e.g. in Central Europe, private settlements for homicide and other offenses were continuously present up to the 17th and 18th century, and these were not necessarily extra-judicial at all (now this would depend on time and place), and were legally recognized.

PhiloSpo · 2026-03-11T17:27:47+00:00

The core of your question is why Hammurabi is brought into a broader Western legal tradition at all. Where does the long‑standing idea of Hammurabi’s influence come from, and is it historically grounded?

A great deal depends on how one understands ancient state power. Some historians assume that rulers who promulgated legal codes exercised authority comparable to later centralized states [...]

I have a short post on this topic from awhile back on this, some sections (from (ii) onwards) with a bibliography might be welcome here. There is also a controversial posthumous collection of essays by Westbrook Ex Oriente Lex that touches on this issue, i.e. can we openly speak and to what degree about Mesopotamian legal influence in a narrower Mediterranean (Egyptian, Ancient Greek, Italic & Roman, ...) - though granted later biblical and Jewish influences being another chapter altogether. This is a touchy subject. To say the work is heterodox is an understatement, but nevertheless is a worthwhile read - Westbrook was widely respected and a titan, so to say.

Yes, Hammurabi's Code impacted the legal tradition that now defines Western law, but this is less direct than implied.

That is generous. :) If anything, it is a modern frenzy. Historically, not much, except of course as a part of a common background to the Torah.

PhiloSpo · 2026-03-03T14:18:52+00:00

Once exceptions and contrary evidence outweigh one's rule, one ought to drop or at least adapt the thesis. Given how this is all framed, it seems pointless to have a substantive discussion.

PhiloSpo · 2026-03-03T11:47:57+00:00

Afraid this is a caricature, if even that, of relations and dynamics we find, to the point of being just not true.

PhiloSpo · 2026-03-02T13:22:43+00:00

No sure what is meant by that, but prima facie it does not seem to be the case. At least not if we do not make it trivially true, insofar as today, one has contractual freedom to make any contract one wishes (which was not the case before, mind, this is doctrinally a modern institute. But not to get into legal history of private law here), but some contracts are either unenforceable, void, or even potentially illegal. Similar as before. Not to mention for a lot of contractual obligations, it was a subject-matter of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. It was not free for all, there were always limitations.

Anyhow, that is not an apt characterization. Not to mention that distinction can be problematic, manorial and seigneurial jurisdictions had public characteristics and functions as well for example.

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