Book Review

Tony Honoré has pugnaciously dedicated his newest book "to the unsatisfied," a broad hint that something familiarly controversial is to come. And come it does, in the form of a historical argument based on a stylistic analysis of the Latin of imperial laws dated between a.d. 379 and 455. These laws are chiefly preserved in the Theodosian Code, a collection of imperial laws of the fourth and fifth centuries a.c. gathered (with subsequent additions) in a.d. 429-435 and thus prior to the more familiar, multi-part Justinianic Code.	1
The purpose of Honoré's stylistic analysis is to distinguish individual late-antique quaestors, who, Honoré and others argue, were the officials responsible for the drafting of late-antique laws, laws whose date and place of promulgation are preserved but which are otherwise attributed only to emperors. He does this by identifying stylistic characteristics and then alternations in styles over time, for there was no "palace" style that flattened all individual expression in the writing of law, nor extensive later editing that altered individual styles beyond recognition. A particular object of Honoré's stylistic interest, the varying legal exactitude of the language employed, then becomes the basis of wider conclusions about the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the West. Yet whether Honoré brings his chariot past the finish line depends on whether you can accept the conclusions he draws from his stylistic analyses, admit his closely reasoned assessments of plausibility that build upon each another, and endorse his assumptions about how law works in premodern society.	2
Honoré is applying to these late-antique texts the analytical techniques he developed in Tribonian (1978), Emperors and Lawyers (1981 and 1994), and Ulpian (1982): "in each of these [earlier works] the dissection of style and outlook shows that, behind the surface uniformity of the texts ... lies diversity" (p. viii). By rearranging here the laws of the Theodosian Code from one empire-wide topical sequence into one Eastern and one Western sequence, each arranged chronologically, and then paying minute attention to the language in which these laws were written, Honoré can discern "distinct intellectual and moral commitments" (p. viii)—that is, styles and attitudes—and, therefore, individual authors. Ten of the book's thirteen chapters are devoted to this endeavor, burrowing into the thorny thickets of Latin style so deeply that readers of this journal, so rarely troubled in its pages even by neatly trimmed and English'd expositions of Roman law in its Roman context, might find that attempts to follow Honoré's path draw blood. Honoré understands (p. ix) that it is easy to criticize his stylistic analysis—which is to some extent subjective and depends in particular on distinctive styles—and the attributions of authorship that depend on it. Yet the extensive effort to prove scientifically that different hands were at work is at heart an attempt to convey, in rigorous form acceptable to his critics, intuitions developed from years of immersion in legal Latin, and these intuitions should be respected. If you can propose better criteria and arguments, Honoré has provided two computer disks with searchable legal texts of the period under discussion with which you can test them (p. ix).	3
Honoré's assessment of how reliably the texts have been transmitted and dated is less controversial: the Theodosian Code is "more text-conservative" than the Justinianic Code (152), and the dating, probably performed by the commissioners themselves, was 89 percent accurate (150). Yet if there is some editing (even if not very much), and one in ten laws is incorrectly dated (and must be redated on the basis of style [p. x]), the certainties on which the stylistic analysis depends become a little less certain. Ninety percent of eighty-nine percent is eighty-one percent: for some, the chariot may be slowing on the back stretch.	4
In making his stylistic analysis, Honoré is especially dependent on alternations between the rhetorical or bureaucratic style, on the one hand, and the legal or "lawyer's" style on the other. Where he diagnoses less legalese, as in the West, he can also distinguish fewer quaestors overall (215). How can Honoré make this distinction between bureaucrats and lawyers? "Quaestors with a purely rhetorical training ... tried to avoid technical terms, since these belonged to a plain style of composition, unsuited to imperial pronouncements," he explains. "But when the quaestor was a lawyer, who had moved on from rhetoric to the classical legal texts, the desire to be clear might override the convention against using technical terms ... whilst his colleague who had picked up only as much law as he needed in order to draft this or that constitution would seek to paraphrase legal terms" (164). This conclusion is a reasoned and hopeful one, and merits respect, but cannot be an iron law. Indeed, even in Honoré's judgment this argument leads to characterizations that are fuzzy at best, like the quaestor of a.d. 381-382, a man "of literary accomplishment who was probably but not certainly a lawyer" (45), or Martyrius, who was "a rhetorically gifted lawyer rather than ... a purely literary figure" (164).	5
Moreover, this perceived distinction between lawyer and bureaucrat, which carries an enormous interpretive weight, is also a value judgment. Rhetoric? Grotesque obfuscation, of course! Bring on lawyerly (and modern [cf. 85]) exactitude and clarity! But were these also the judgments of the later Roman Empire? Honoré suggests that this was so, with reservations. For although "the high literary style was the most admired" (22), he also suggests that the compilers of the Theodosian Code considered their laws "brief" and "clear," even though these laws might seem "obscure and wordy" to us (127). The brevitas and claritas (CTh 1.1.6) claimed by the compilers might, however, mean not "brevity and clarity" but "trimmed" and "brilliant," the latter in a socially superior or rhetorically elevated sense. The "obscurity" from which laws are rescued (NT 1.1.4) would then be that imposed by time, not confused syntax. That is, what we deem an opaque and hyper-rhetoricized style, they found impressive and appropriate. The more difficult and knotted the language, the better, and thus the more the emperor's phrasing resembled the knot of Gordion, the better. The very existence of hypertrophied rhetoric in legal as well as literary texts warns against singling out precise and clear legal language as the standard to which all should have been striving but did not.	6
A way of testing the value contemporaries placed on legalistic law would be to ask, How and why did this law work? Was "lawyers' law" in fact more effective than "rhetorical law"? Honoré does not tackle these questions head on, contenting himself in the preface and the first chapter with the lionization of lawyers as men who combined "technical expertise with a trained sense of justice and right conduct" (7) and with the suggestion that the appointment of these lawyers to quaestorships demonstrates "a commitment to the rule of law" (x), itself an element of good government. Lawyers' laws, because clearer, were good; without good laws, even "physical security"—the most important aim of government—"was incomplete" (8). Yet these observations remain suggestions. The opposite position might well be maintained: in the almost total absence of enforcement mechanisms, "rhetorical law," written in a style associated with cultural authority and therefore commanding obedience, might have been more effective than "lawyerly law." In either case, the impact or efficacy of laws cannot be derived from their language, or from a study of their admirable lawyer-authors, or even from a study of the bureaucracy to which they came to belong. To understand impact and efficacy, one must look not at the fact of lawyerly law, but at how that or other law was received or understood in court, and at what a nonspecialist understanding of legitimacy might be.	7
Built upon this "sketch" (25), with its assumptions about good government and the rule of law, is one further conclusion. The Eastern Roman Empire, perhaps "more professional than the western" (19; cf. 23, 25), survived, while the western did not: "what role did law play in the outcome?" (1). Honoré's logic is clear. There were more lawyer-quaestors in the East (15/30) than in the West (5/19). The East was, therefore, more committed to good government. Therefore the East survived. That more of these Eastern lawyer-quaestors (8/15, compared to 2/5 in the West) were Christians Honoré also finds significant (23), for this fact demonstrates that in the East, law and the Christian life were integrated, which gave "the legal profession in the East greater theoretical strength and practical effectiveness" (24). Here too the brief argument has an eerie gossamer quality that the low numbers only serve to highlight. There is simply not enough evidence here to justify the assumptions or support such a far-reaching theory, intriguing though it may be.	8
Although for some, as for this reviewer, this may be the point where a wheel falls off the chariot, all should admit that this book is nonetheless an exhilarating ride, admirable for its inventive hypotheses if not for its conclusions. Some phrasing will amuse or baffle the American cousins: Christians "pressurizing" widows brings to mind irresistible images of pursuit with bicycle pump (6); Britishisms like "wet" as a political term meaning "weak" (2), composing "in the Curzon manner" (48), and "French-style cohabitation" (69) can confuse. Other idiosyncrasies may irritate a wider audience, like the avoidance of final punctuation in the footnotes, which can create unattractive chaos and is an experiment that should not be repeated. These last points are, however, small points. Overall, the conviction of the author and the ruthless thoroughness of the stylistic analysis compel admiration and should inspire Roman historians as well as scholars of Roman law to explore, vindicate, or disprove some of the conclusions about law and society that Honoré posits.	9
Elizabeth A. Meyer University of Virginia

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