Roman Justice: Corruption and Abuse of Power

Lesson Transcript

In Roman justice, which was better than probably the justice in any other country on Earth at that time, but for all of its advancements, it still had many flaws. There was definitely one code of justice for the poor and a different one for the rich. So the judge who was sitting there condemning a poor man for doing something, the judge may have been doing the same thing, but it was like, "I'm different, you know, I'm a magistrate, I'm up here." Or they would judge their fellow peer.

If you were the one in power, if you were the magistrate and this fellow over here, he might be just as rich or richer than you. In fact, he might be richer than you and you'd like to have his home. And so, yeah, you condemn him for something that you yourself might be guilty of. Or often they condemn people for stuff they didn't even do. And then they took their home, took their possessions. I mean, it happened all the time. You're reading Roman history and it's like, "Wow, that seems to have been the norm."