Friends of Antiquity Sunday Series: Heyworth-Smith Memorial Lecture

The world of the Romans was as much a world full of laws as it was, famously, a world full of gods. But, did ancient Rome have a ‘rule of law’?

 

Join UQ’s Friends of Antiquity at the 2024 Adrian Heyworth-Smith Memorial Lecture, ‘The rule of law in Ancient Rome’, presented by Dr Eleanor Cowan, Lecturer in Roman History, The University of Sydney.

 

The ideal of the rule of law – that the law should protect all citizens from arbitrary exercises of power – can be traced from ancient Greece to the present day. Since the mid-twentieth century it has become one of the pre-eminent political values of our time.

 

The United Nations has long held the rule of law as one of its ‘universal and indivisible core values and principles’ and it is now firmly part of the lingua franca of domestic and international politics around the world. The study of the rule of law has likewise exploded over the last quarter-century across the disciplines of law, philosophy, history, economics, and political science.

 

Dr Cowan will explore the role of the law in the years immediately following the cessation of civil conflict at Rome.

 

Dr Eleanor Cowan is an historian of conflict and post-conflict Rome at the University of Sydney. She specializes in the history of communities in conflict, the history of thought and ideas, historiography and the history of the early Principate.

 

She also has an interest in Roman law, including the concept of the rule of law and in domestic violence in the ancient world.