Was Mommsen's work on Roman law overly focused on elites?
While my primary focus was necessarily on the public law and legal pronouncements of the Roman state, which naturally involved the governing classes and legal experts, my aim was always to understand the *system* of Roman law as it functioned. The comprehensiveness of works like "Römisches Staatsrecht" and "Römisches Strafrecht" reflects an endeavor to map the entirety of the legal framework. However, the surviving evidence often privileges the perspectives of the educated and powerful, a challenge inherent in studying any ancient society.
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