The God and the Bureaucrat

‘In The God and the Bureaucrat, Zachary Herz offers a powerful new vision of Roman law. Herz sees talk about law, and ultimately Roman legal literatures themselves, as a preeminent site for imagining the relationship between norms, politics and power. A richly theorized work, its close readings offer startling new perspectives on texts we thought we knew.’ Clifford Ando, University of Chicago‘Herz’s powerful and provocative book not only interrogates the stories that Romans told to themselves, but also the stories that we tell ourselves today. From Cicero to Joan Didion, by way of Ronald Dworkin and a starry roster of Roman emperors, Herz’s bold and original thesis is nothing less than an invitation to rethink the entire field of classical Roman political thought.’ Caroline Humfress, University of St Andrews and University of Michigan Law School‘Roman law presents its readers with what at first sight appears to be a sturdy edifice for the structuring of social relations. With this penetrating book, Herz peers into its structural core to show that, far from being adamantine, the system was extraordinarily contingent and evanescent. Roman imperial law is best understood not as describing social realities, let alone constituting them by fiat. It served, rather, to construct an ideal world far beyond the realizable in response to the crises and contradictions inherent in autocracy.’ Noel Lenski, Yale University‘Zachary Herz prompts us to rethink the dual nature of what we call ‘law’ as a particular discursive formation, which facilitated imaginative thinking in several domains, and as an institutional framework that regulated social relations and undergirded Rome’s political order.’ Carlos F. Noreña, University of California, Berkeley

Zachary Herz is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His research employs legal theory and methodology to better understand the distinctive role of law in Roman political and ethical discourse. This is his first book.