Chapter 5 - ‘Person’ in law

Summary

Whereas the previous chapters dealt with the influence of Hellenistic philosophy on Roman law in terms of method, this chapter deals with the influence with regard to a substantive issue, the notion of person. The Roman jurists became interested in the abstract use of the notion of person in the slipstream of the philosophers, who combined the Greek understanding of person with a more indigenous, that is Etruscan, understanding thereof. ‘Person’ thus understood would become one of the central notions in Roman law and beyond.