The Legal Procedure of Cicero’s Time

Of value to the student of Roman law, criminal and military procedure and the history of European courts. Originally published: Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1901. xiii, 599 pp. A systematic and historical treatment of the civil and criminal procedure of Cicero’s time. At the same time the author examines the legal difficulties and contradictions found in Cicero’s writings on procedure. With a subject index and an index to passages found in Cicero’s works. Contents include: Civil Procedure, The Courts of the Monarchy and Early Republic, The Courts of the Ciceronian Period and Criminal Procedure.'The book considers the Roman theory of civil procedure, the magistrate and the judex, bringing out clearly the distinction between the two, the function of the latter, and the part of the process which took place before the magistrate. Under the Action are treated, in part two, preliminaries, summons, proceedings in jure, formula, dangers of the formulary system, different kinds of actions... confession, neglect of defence, use of the oath, judicium, execution, appeal and reversal. This part forms an exceedingly interesting and valuable treatise in itself... Part three deals with criminal procedure for the treatment of which Mr. Greenidge has an especial qualification, having already published a valuable treatise on Infamia. In an appendix he gives a detailed legal commentary on four great legal pleas of Cicero, with reference to the systematic portion of the book. All in all, the treatise reflects great credit on the author ... and shows that the seed planted by Maine fifty years ago is producing a fair tree, that in the home of the Common Law, the value of the Roman jurisprudence is better and better understood.'-- E.S.S., 49 Am. L. Reg. 556 January to December 1902.Abel Hendy Jones Greenidge [1865-1906] taught Roman law at Oxford and Cambridge. He is the author of Infamia, Its Place in Roman Public and Private Law (1894), A Handbook of Greek Constitutional History (1896) and Roman Public Life (1901).