"How about Caligula when he made a brothel out of the wives of the Senate ? How about Nero, or Commodus, or any number of other similar Emperors, were they subject to the law?"
I said "in theory." The Emperors were often considered divine beings. The Roman Empire was far from perfect and certainly did not follow many of the principles that Romans claimed to uphold.
"There a are a lot of problems with this argument. Roman secular and religious authority were closely linked even in the Republican days. For example Caesar become Pontifex Maximus, head of the official Roman relgion (and much later the title which ultimately became the Catholic Pope), as a neccessary part of his rise to political power. The title was held by Roman Emperors from that point therafter. I beleive the very etiquette of the Roman senate was controlled by religious traditions.
In the source of law and the indivudal, you have certain Greek city states and republics to consider, who understood individual rights and codified it into law... not just ancient Athens but many others including the Republic of Rhodes contemporaneous with the rise of the Roman Republic."
The Romans borrowed heavily from the Greeks. Certainly the concepts of Athens were known to them and incorporated by them. However, Roman citizens had rights that could not be taken from them. Probably the best example of this is in the New Testament when Paul demands to be taken to Rome for trial. As a Roman citizen, he has that right. As much as the procurators and soldiers wanted to kill him, Paul had a right to a trial and Roman justice.
"There were also one thing legal traditions which though unwritten, were sophisticated ... consider the Althing of 13th century Iceland which evolved from unwritten Norse legal traditions (the basically illiterate and pagan Norse inventing among other things the concept of trial by a jury of peers...)"
Iceland has the oldest continuous democracy in the world. Iceland also had a population which was never great in terms of numbers. Even today less people live in Iceland than live in my section of Houston. While I respect Icelandic democracy and they should be proud of it, it is a far different cry from having and creating a republican system of government which can fairly govern millions of people. We have the Greeks and Romans to thank for modern democratic systems.
Trial by jury is not an exclusively Norse concept. It goes back further than this and is a tribal custom in many societies. We get our modern ideas of jury trials from English law, which was, of course, influenced by Germanic law. However, what you are describing as "trial by jury" often meant trial by combat or trial by a selection of elders of a tribe or clan, hardly a trial of jury by ones peers. What we understand as "trial by jury" which is a trial by ones peers goes back to England.
"I think if you read some of the current understanding of political organization among European "Barbarians" you might well be amazed at some of the things you see, even Caesar described the annual election of 'magistrates' so you had for example representative government."
Did they have a representative system of government whereby citizens of a state (and the word "citizen" is a term of art developed by the Greeks and Romans and their idea of "citizenship" is strikingly similar to ours) could elect representatives?
Democracy as we know it is also a Western invention, from the Greeks.
"I'm not so sure about that. Where did the Greeks get it for one thing? All this side talk about the Minoans may have a certain relevance here. They didn't seem to have aristocratic burials for one thing. But you hit on the big question here...."
Show me a society before the Greeks that practiced democracy. Once again, a group of people sitting around a campfire does not fit this definition. Show me where the concept of "citizenship" is defined so that a citizen has the right to elect his own representatives.
There is a big difference between the elders of the tribe sitting around the campfire and deciding by vote what is good for the tribe and having thousands of people elect representatives by being classified as a citizen of a republic and voting.
"This hinges on the idea of the "Barbarians" of Europe being unsophisticated savagaes sitting around like in 'Quest for Fire' until the Romans showed up and civilized them. This Victorian / Roman notion seems to have been largely debunked in recent years. We have learned that in many areas Celtic "Barbarians" actually lived in towns... some of them very sophisticated consider Numantia just to cite one example, which predated Roman arrival. Look at the quality of the metal work
just a s a sort of visual reminder, look at these artifacts from a 4th Century BC La Tene find in Switzerland
I submit these people were not quite the ignorant savages the Romans claimed they were."
I can show you better artwork than that going back far further in time. So what? I never said that Celts did not have good artists. I went to an exhibit on Ur at the Houston Museum of Natural Science and saw pieces of jewelery from 3000 B.C. that are hauntingly beautiful and are obviously high quality works of art.
I never said that "barbarians" were ignorant savages. They had sophisticated belief systems, technology, metalworking, art and other qualities too long to list here. However, they were also largely illiterate and did not develop the concept of a nation-state AFAIK. They certainly did not define a "citizen" which is the heart of a democratic ideal.
Also, Roman construction was the best of its kind. There are still Roman roads in use in Romania on which cars can be driven. Not bad for 2000 year old technology. No Celtic monument can compete with this.
"You might be surprised some of the information wich has come out about Roman and Celtic roads..."
Really? Did the Celts build a version of the Flavian amphitheater or the Hippodrome as well? The Romans may not have invented some of these things, but they certainly built them and built them well. Did Europe have an international road system before the Romans? Why not?
