“Parsimonia atque tenuitas apud veteres custodita sunt” Certain Aspects of Laws Preventing Extravagant Expenditures in Roman Law
“Parsimonia atque tenuitas apud veteres custodita sunt” Certain Aspects of Laws Preventing Extravagant Expenditures in Roman Law

Summary/Abstract: Sumptuary laws, the legislative measures of the Roman republic and early imperial era, were aiming to restrain extreme and extravagant expenditure via limiting the amount of money spent on feasts, games, funerals, weddings and other social events. Not much interest is shown in sumptuary laws: contemporary jurisprudence regards it as a limitation of property, a minority of authors deem these laws the results of a social legislation, whereas earlier secondary works put a stress on their historic impact. As a first step in the detailed research of the topic of sumptuary laws, this paper intends to give an outline of the actual content of these laws, in a chronological order. Such a primary source-based analyses could serve as the first step towards a better understanding of the Roman concept of limitation of property.

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