as constituting a universal legal category entailing that the rules of conduct were implanted in man by nature, and as such the ultimate principle upon which all law was founded, originated from stoicism.17 Characteristic of the stoicism fundamental to the Roman notion of natural law is the pantheistic idea that Nature is founded upon, and governed by, reason.This reason in turn would help humans to form their notions of right and wrong.18 “The Stoics, on one side, argued that Nature, identified as a divine, providential reason informing the entire cosmos, leads us to form certain notions on which we might ultimately build a comprehensive philosophy to guide us through every aspect of life”19 - which made natural law a non-religious category of super-natural law. Given this premiss, Nature, cosmic reason, possesses the self-evident authority to prescribe eternally and universally valid and binding rules for all humans and all aspects of human behavior, the so-called lex aeterna.20 For instance, according to Cicero’s (106- 43 BC) definition of law, the true law is for the benefit of all, irrespective of nationality, and eternally valid irrespective of human conduct and human legislation.21 Roman culture, including the Roman notion of law, started to be influenced by Greek culture and philosophy after the Roman conquest of Greece (circa 150 BC).22 But it was when stoicism was first introduced into Roman culture (by, for example, Seneca, Epiktetos, and Marcus Aurelius during the first and second centuries AD) that ius naturale appears as a concept of law, on the one hand, made use of provide theoretical explanations p a r t v i i , c h a p t e r 1 568 17 Buckland,Roman Private Law, pp. 28-29;Verdross, Abendl. Rechtsph., pp.46-49; Schiller, Roman Law: Mechanisms of Development, pp. 569-584; Wieacker, Römische Rechtsgeschichte, pp. 642-647; History, pp. 200-206. 18 Verdross, Abendl. Rechtsph., p. 44; Sauter, Phil. Grundlagen, p. 48. 19 The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, Bunnin and Tsui-James, eds., p. 493. 20 Verdross, Abendl. Rechtsph., p. 46. See also Sauter, Phil. Grundlagen, p. 58; Morrison, Jurisprudence: from the Greeks to Post-modernism, pp. 52, 54, and 62. 21 Verdross, Abendl. Rechtsph., pp. 47-49. Cf.Wieacker, Römische Rechtsgeschichte, p. 621. 22 Welzel, Naturrecht, p. 38; Schiller, Roman Law:Mechanisms of Development, p. 569; Schlosser, Grundzüge, pp. 76-78.
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