Extensive Scope. One of the most distinctive features of ancient Rome as compared to any of its contemporaries is its extensive legal system. Of course, many Greek and near-eastern civilizations had had law codes long before the Romans. Some have even speculated that the roots of the Celtic "Brehon" laws antedate the origins of Rome. None of these legal systems, however, nor any that were to appear for another thousand years (except the religiously based Jewish Talmud), had anything like the scope of Roman law. A consequence (and cause) of this large system was the Romans' interest in establishing legal rules not just for the most common or most general situations, but for every eventuality.

Criminal and Constitutional Law. In contrast to this interest in legal particulars, the Romans were not generally interested in grand theories of the law...