ABSTRACT
The self-presentation of the Corpus iuris civilis in the paratextual prefaces is not limited to prosopopoeia. Another recurring figure is that the body of law constitutes a temple of justice. The metonymical movement from one metaphor to another suggests either that the temple of justice transformed into a walled fortress, or that the temple of justice surrounded by a wall. This chapter shows reading and interpreting statutes and cases, the Roman jurists are working with but also resisting the rhetorical and tropological dimensions of language. It develops this argument by reading how the Roman jurists read law and also suggest that this reading practice has certain affinities with cartographic practice and that it constitutes another way in which legal discourse understands the social world in spatial terms. The chapter discusses tempting to view the traditional, received view that the Roman jurists resisted and rejected theoretical reflection in the light of Franz Kafka parable invoked.
