1 Answer

Books or documents? The best documents include the fines, punishments, judges, and the people who brought court cases. Interestingly enough, those documents do not describe any judge ever asking the crowed who they should release. It just was not done in the Roman Empire by judges who lived and died by the rules of law. There are many documents from this time period to research, and many on-line. But I'd start with university press monographs because they are put up for peer review. Read those books and pay attention to the footnotes and endnotes, and then look for those documents on-line so you can judge for yourself after you have read at least five reputable monographs.

Fot those that don't know, a monograph is not a novel, and it is not a text book, it is an in depth study about an event, person, or idea that has been reviewed by experts in the field and then printed by university presses or other presses that are scholarly. But generally, you can be assured given two books, the one printed by reputable, scholarly presses is probably going to be a good book read.

After you read those five modern books, then look for the original documents because you will have a far better understanding what you are looking for and why. I'm doing that right now with Philip II of Spain. The only difference is I've read seventeen books on Philip and am only now beginning to read the Spanish and English texts. Why so many? Because he wrote over 100,000 documents in his life time and I was looking for information about one very specific event and I wanted to find out what other scholars had already found before I jumped in.