ABSTRACT

This article seeks to break new ground by adopting an innovative methodology – a legal-narratological approach – in order to take a fresh look at the narrative dynamics and narrative tiers of a two-thousand-year-old piece of marriage legislation – the late first century BCE leges Iuliae. We argue that these Roman laws, which brought hitherto private behaviours into the public jurisdiction and state control, sought to establish its legal authority as a new normative framework through the lawmaker’s overt manipulation of the law qua narrative. In particular, we submit that it is through the explicit representation of the marriage legislation as a new chapter in an ancient cultural narrative that Augustus attempts to persuade the Roman senate and people of the constitutional validity of his radical legal reforms. We further propose that the ultimate failure of Augustus’ marriage legislation can also be understood in terms of a failure to align this new statute with the ‘master plot’ of that wider cultural narrative.

摘要

本文试图通过采用一种创新的方法（一种法律叙事方法）来开拓新的领域，以便重新审视已有2000年历史的一部婚姻立法的叙事动态和叙事层级。公元前世纪列里埃埃。我们认为，这些罗马法，这带来了前所未有的私人行为进入公众管辖和状态控制，力求通过立法者对法律的公然操纵确立其法律权威作为一种新的规范性框架QUA叙述。特别是，我们认为，奥古斯都试图通过婚姻立法作为古代文化叙事中的新篇章的明确代表，试图说服罗马参议院和人民他的激进法律改革的宪法效力。我们进一步提出，奥古斯都的婚姻立法的最终失败也可以从未能使这一新法规与更广泛的文化叙述的“主要情节”相一致的角度来理解。