Sublime

As to invoking the justice of Rome against his acts of violence or his crimes, the provincials could not do this unless they could find a Roman citizen who would act as their patron,631 for, as to themselves, they had no right to demand the protection of the laws of the city, or to appeal to its courts.

Formerly the law was a religious decision; it passed for a revelation made by the gods to the ancestors, to the divine founder, to the sacred kings, to the magistrate-priests. In the new code, on the contrary, the legislator no longer speaks in the name of the gods. The decemvirs of Rome receive their powers from the people. The people also investe

in 149 BCE, a permanent criminal court had been established at Rome, with the main aim of giving foreigners compensation and the right of redress against extortion by their Roman rulers.

Mercy triumphs over judgment.

The Roman territory ( ager Romanus) never increased. It remained enclosed within the immutable limits which the kings had traced for it, and which the ceremony of the Ambarvalia sanctified every year. What increased with every conquest was the dominion of Rome ( imperium Romanum).

The Brythonic word for ‘ford’, which barely survives in names, was ritu – as in Anderitum, the Roman fort (and ford) at Pevensey in Sussex; and in Penrith in Cumbria.