The contract as a basis for obligations under Roman private law

The article is devoted to the characteristics of the contract as a basis for the emergence of obligations under Roman private law. It was established that the concept of «agreement» was not characteristic of ancient Roman law. The agreement of two or more persons on the creation, change or termination of the legal relationship was based on a contract or pact. A contract with legal protection was recognized as a contract. A pact was a contract, as a rule, without legal protection and legal significance, therefore the fulfillment of the obligation depended on the good faith of the counterparties, their moral qualities, and not on the prescription of positive law.An essential feature of the concept of a contract was an agreement between two people to establish a binding right, therefore the contract was considered a type of legal transaction. According to Roman jurists, a contract is an agreement between two or more persons to establish, change or terminate a civil legal relationship (rights and obligations). The agreement of the parties could be reached either by thing, or by letter, or by messenger, if the parties are not in the same place; even tacit consent.According to Roman law, it was not necessary to give each contract a special meaning, so the most common contracts had a special name.It was concluded that the Roman contractual system was characterized by strict typification. Belonging to the appropriate type (kind) of the contract was determined by clarifying the claim that could be filed for such a legal relationship.The system of contracts in Roman law is divided according to the methods of protection into contracts and pacts. Contracts were divided into named and anonymous; formal and material contracts were distinguished among nominal contracts; formal contracts included verbal and literal contracts, and material contracts included consensual and real ones; according to the distribution of rights and obligations between the parties into unilateral and bilateral; according to the criterion of reciprocity for paid and free; according to the probability of satisfaction of the creditor’s property interest, risky or aleatory contracts were distinguished. Pacts were divided, depending on the legal protection, into clothed pacts (contracts with the right of action) and bare pacts (contracts that did not receive a claim).