The Military Law of Rome - C. E. Brand: Roman Military Law. Pp. xxxiii+226. Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1968. Cloth, 62s.

Abstract

COLONEL BRAND, now chairman of the Pan-American National Bank of San Antonio, Texas, served sixteen years as a U.S. Army judge-advocate during his thirty-two year career as a military officer. He therefore has a very wide knowledge of U.S. military law. His study of Roman military law, however, is based largely upon his graduate studies at Yale over thirty years ago, and, as he himself acknowledges, will be found to vary but slightly from the original version contained in his Yale thesis. The readership at which the book is aimed may be gathered from the words of Major-General Charles L. Decker in his preface: 'For the lawyer and officer who would increase his understanding and broaden his professional perspective, Colonel Brand has performed a signal service in writing this book, and I recommend it to old and young alike.' The work contains chapters on the Roman constitution (from the legendary foundation down to Cicero), on discipline and criminal law, on military organization (largely based on Polybius), on disciplinary organization in the army, on religion and discipline (in which a section on sex offences of Vestals is surely an odd inclusion), on 'Offenses and Punishments' (which in spite of the title includes sections on decorations, triumphs, and ovations), and a rapid survey in twelve and a half pages of the period from the Punic Wars to Constantine. The final chapter is on military codes and treatises, and these are outlined in four appendices. This tremendous historical sweep from Romulus to Constantine is too vast to admit of a uniform treatment, as is explicitly recognized on the dust-cover itself: 'From the fantastic evolution which is the history of Rome, Colonel Brand has been able to construct a more or less static historical mosaic which may be considered typically "Roman". This comes into sharpest focus during the period of the Punic Wars, when the city and its people were most intensely Roman.' Had in fact Colonel Brand been content to describe the Polybian system the book would have been much more sound. Instead, in his search for codification, he leaps over the centuries and produces, as from a conjuror's hat, the leges militares which he calls the Laws from Ruffus. On the flimsiest grounds he argues (pp. 140 ff.) that, regardless of the date or identity of Ruffus, (surely, Rufus), his code must be accepted in its entirety as 'the Roman Articles of War, or Code of Military Justice, based essentially upon the practice of the best days of the Empire, codified (unofficially) by the otherwise unknown Ruffus, and preserved in the Byzantine codes until the advent of printed books brought them to light in company with Vegetius and earlier exponents of Western Roman military traditions'. He would even maintain that articles of Ruffus which appear in substance, but in different words, in the Digest, are early imperial law and taken from some other immediate source than the authorities quoted in the Digest. The latter point is as hard to disprove as to prove, since some essential military law is much ...