Abstract
The ancient Roman world never had a body of knowledge comparable to the science of economics as we understand it today. However, in antiquity, there was a discourse on " economics " and numerous treatises on the subject (for example, those of Xenophon - , whose work was translated into Latin by Cicero - Plato, Aristotle and Philodemus of Gadara, among others). But these reflections, although they take place at the heart of a discipline with a similar name, do not necessarily deal with the same phenomena. In fact, it's hard to find any common ground with modern economics. Based on the origin of the term, oikonomia (from oikos, " home " and nemein, " distribute, manage well "), to which is added the adjective derived from it, oikonomikē, it is appropriate to call the ancient discipline "economic" to distinguish it from modern economics. This name also has the advantage of revealing its theoretical and practical dimensions. In its theoretical dimension, economics may have been considered by ancient authors as a discipline of ethical philosophy. Moreover, it very rarely dealt with the public domain (the city's income and expenditure), and more often with the domestic sphere in general, where the family patrimony was conceived as an organic whole. In this context, economics refers to the administration of goods, the art of organizing the work of others, and relations between spouses. Ancient economics, unlike modern economic science, is therefore not concerned with the interactions between social agents within the community, but with the behavior of each individual within the family.
The question of wealth acquisition, or chrematistics, is not absent from these reflections. But the activities involved are again distinguished according to moral criteria : some, linked to the land, are honorable because they reward hard work, while others, linked to money, are less so. And this ethical dimension is revealed in particular in the purpose pursued by economics : the ultimate goal of wealth management remains the pursuit of well-being, as opposed to the gratification of needs. And yet, in this economic discourse indexed on moral values, the virtue that ancient authors mobilized most was justice. It is here, precisely, that the aims of the law come together. But contrary to the current trend to analyze law through economics, or to place legal science at the service of economics, in Rome, ius provides the criteria for action and choice, without ever losing sight of justice.
This predominantly ethical dimension of ancient economics should not, however, lead us to imagine that philosophical precepts were followed by all, or that Romans were infallibly virtuous. Nor should it obscure a more technical dimension, akin to modern economics. The following lectures therefore examine Roman law in the context of philosophy, technical knowledge of economic facts and real-life behavior.
