ABSTRACT
Later sources credit Trajan with an active and diligent part in the formulation and administration of justice. He was particularly praised for his introduction of new laws, while scrupulously reinforcing those which already existed and renewing many which had been suppressed by Domitian and other unprincipled tyrants.1 His legal rulings were issued through imperial edicta, pronouncements that had the same authority as a modern papal encyclical, giving orders in the guise of ‘considered advice’. Their judicial supremacy was unquestionable for, as remains the case with the Roman Catholic Pope, the imperator, as Pater Patriae, was the paterfamilias of the, citizen community, and literally a father to his children. Thus,
What the emperor decides has the same authority as the law of the people, because the people have made him their sovereign.2
