My name is Zachary Herz, and I am an Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado Boulder. I hold a J.D. and a Ph.D.; my research focuses on how law functioned within the political and social environment of the Principate.
Put another way, I am trying to answer the question, “What did Romans talk about when they talked about law?” My dissertation, Playing the Judge: Law and Imperial Messaging in Severan Rome, considers the role of law in imperial self-definition and -legitimation strategies throughout the Severan period, and how other actors within Roman legal culture reacted to this legal program. I am currently writing on citation practices under Severus Alexander and the concept of arbitrary violence in Cassius Dio; I have previously published on the role of credit and default in Cicero, as well as on contemporary American antidiscrimination law.
(There was a pretty bird)
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