Sine dolo malo

Abstract

The Oscan law of the Tabula Bantina (tbo), the longest Oscan text found to this date, is the product of a politically significant time in Roman history in which the Italian socii revolted against, and tried to assert independence from, Rome. In spite of this, the tbo largely reads like a Roman law, particularly in vocabulary and phrasing. The aim of this article is to reveal the extent to which the tbo was influenced by Latin legal language. It will identify several remarkable syntactic, stylistic and epigraphic aspects of this Oscan law and compare them to conventions in the Latin legal register.