Equity in Rome

Abstract

The Romans were well-known for their pragmatism and their law for its aversion to abstraction and general definitions. Their very language reflects this trait of their culture. At the same time, the Digest alone contains more than nine thousand citations from almost forty different jurists who lived between the late Republic and the early Dominate., As a result, it is certainly not possible to deduce from the hundreds of extant sources which mention equity a single definition which could be regarded as universally valid throughout the whole history of Roman law. Nevertheless, some general patterns do emerge from this multitude of sources of which we can try to make some sense.