Homo Leon. Roman Political Institutions: From City to State

Routledge, 2014. — 446 p.Nothing is more interesting, in our eyes, than the study to which Professor Homo devotes himself of the causes which determined the long, slow development of Roman political institutions. He shows forcibly that in that constitutional work theory played a small part and only came in late. Among the Greeks, political speculation throve, and created a literature. Well into the Hellenistic period, in the cities which Hellas sowed all over the East, the debates of the Agora were a passion and a sport. In Rome, the theory of public law does not appear before the second century. Then men went in for speculation, but about what is rather than about what ought to be. Polybios declared that the Roman constitution was a realization of the best type of constitution possible, by the combination of the three principles of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Professor Homo is so much interested in the characteristics which differentiate the Roman constitution and in their connection with particular circumstances, that it is doubtful whether the development of a body of institutions has ever been studied and explained in such careful detail.