Rome and the sea of law

ASOR (Ancient Near East Today) just put up a post by my editorial colleague, Emilia Mataix Ferrándiz: "A Sea of Law: The Romans and Their Maritime World". Mataix Ferrándiz begins:

The sea was key for Rome’s success; it served as the setting of several battles that granted them hegemony over the Mediterranean as well as the main highway for both ideas and commerce. However, human bodies are not naturally suited to the sea; entering or crossing it means challenging one’s own capacities in the face of the power of water. The latter is echoed in literary sources, which often focus on the sea’s enormity and wilderness, thus evoking — and sometimes even exaggerating — its aura of mystery and uncertainty and the effect it has in ancient societies.

Roman legal sources, on the other hand, tend to focus more on the practical challenges and effects of interacting with the sea, presenting a different vantage point from which to study how Romans regarded and dealt with the challenges presented by the sea. So what can we say about how Roman jurists perceived the sea? Although jurists coincide in their understanding of the sea as a dangerous realm not governed by their civil law, the solutions which they provided for similar problems vary from jurist to jurist and from one period to another.

Roman mosaic from Veii (Italy), 3rd-4th century AD, Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe (Carole Raddato)

In the Roman world, spaces were governed by different legal fields. While the land was managed by ius civile (the law of Roman citizens), the sea was a space of ius gentium, or the law of all peoples. It was the jurist Marcian (second–third century CE), who wrote that the sea was the common property to all according to natural law. From his writings the main point to note is that the sea is not subject to an individual’s dominion and, therefore, is also not subject to Roman governance. Despite Roman imperialistic aims and propaganda, it is unlikely that the ideology of rule over land and sea extended to any practical attempts to regulate the use of the sea. 

Mataix Ferrándiz goes on to argue that

although the rule of the sea was a complicated matter, and the sea itself appeared as an uncivilised, untamed wilderness, Roman law was able to provide practical solutions to deal with real-life sea problems. Thus, I would propose to look at Rome as both defined and confined by the sea, but ultimately overcoming not just the physical but also the legal challenges presented by the sea.