Abstract

At the outset of Laying Down the Law, John Matthews states that his book will attempt to provide ‘an understanding of the nature of the [Theodosian] Code and how it was produced’, and that it will be ‘about the Code itself and not about the Roman Empire portrayed in its pages’ (vii). The nervous reader might anticipate dry exegesis of legalistic minutiae, particularly when M. goes on to express the concern that this will be his ‘least “popular” book’ (xi). Neither M. nor the nervous reader should be concerned. Laying Down the Law is quintessentially a Matthewsian book, sharing many of the virtues and much of the style of his Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court AD 364-425 (1975) and The Roman Empire of Ammianus (1989)