This panel discussion explores how international law and diplomacy actually functioned in Roman Antiquity (500 BCE - 476 CE). This period is often presented in modern handbooks of the history of international law either as a ‘primitive stage’ or a ‘pre-history’, when it is not left out of the handbook narrative completely.
There are a number of reasons for this, which will be set out in the first panel presentation, given by Jacob Giltaij of the Law Faculty of the University of Amsterdam. Most obviously, in Roman Antiquity, there was no such thing as a ‘nation’ in the modern sense of the word. However, especially the Roman Empire did at one point have a set population and territory (the ‘limes’). Moreover, a theoretical concept known as the ‘ius gentium’ seems to indicate the existence of a type of ‘international law’. Then again, the meaning of the ‘ius gentium’ appears to differ fundamentally from what we would now see as ‘international law’.

In the second panel presentation, the focus is not on these theoretical considerations, but rather on the practice of international law. More specifically, Professor Emilia Mataix Ferrándiz of the Law Faculty of the International University of Catalonia will discuss the diplomatic practice in Roman Antiquity, as a counterweight to the theoretical considera­tions in the first presentation. By focusing on diplomacy as a practice of international law, it is possible to go beyond the idea of Roman Antiquity knowing an international law only in a ‘primitive’ or ‘pre-historical’ stage. Indeed, it can be concluded that international law, however defined in this period, was actually intricate and well-developed.