Avera, and welcome to Emperor of Rome, a Roman history podcast from Latrobe University. I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is Dr

Zachary Hertz, assistant professor in classics at the University of Colorado

Boulder. This is episode C-X-L-I-V.

Ulpian.

Ulpian was a Roman jurist who became quite influential during the rule of the

Severin dynasty.

He was considered one of the great legal authorities of his time and

his writings and thought would later form the basis of law for the Western Roman

Empire. Here's Zachary Hurts.

Opian is this fascinating mix of brilliant legal philosopher and one of the most important

politicians of his time.

It's a combination that isn't very well attested

in any other period.

It's really something you see in the Severin era.

And as a result result I think of him as the great jurist of the modern

legal state he's the first of the Roman jurists, like gonna use that term a lot,

I mean essentially legal academics,

to actually write like an administrator,

to really think about how law works in a state that is using law as one tool in its toolbox

in order to actually improve lives, improve functioning, basically make sure everything works whatever you want your state to do

and one of the reasons why I think Opians speaks so much to modern legal readers, to modern philosophers,

modern legal historians, is that he imagines

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