ABSTRACT
In this contribution, I will offer a comparative reflection on the reprisal of Roman law as a “metatemporal” foundation for the Chinese Civil Code by suggesting that we interpret this “metatemporality” as a literary construct rather than a universal legal principle. Although the values of Roman law might seem universal and valid to this day, their application relies on centuries of carefully constructed literary canonisation. Alberico Gentili and other jurists of the humanist legal tradition used Virgil and Roman law as proxies for a certain idea of what law was supposed to be – a civilised natural law based on historical fatalism. It was the Corpus’ fate, as much as it was Aeneas’, to “civilise” the world with the persuasiveness of their respective legal and poetic arguments.
