Christopher Burg

“Because it was relatively small and owned so much, the Roman landowning elite was potentially highly vulnerable to attack from the many who were less fortunate. And when all the bullshit about rational, divinely inspire social order is put to one side, Roman law was all about defining and protecting property rights, so that the state-generated and state-supported legal system was the basic prop of the established elite’s social dominance. This indeed was the quid pro quo which made them willing to raise and pay over taxation in return.”
― Peter Heather, The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders