Legal forms of international commerce: brief notes on stipulatio per interpretem

This paper examines the legal conditions that, in the late classical period, made it possible to conclude a stipulatio through an interpreter. Starting from the role of congruentia verborum in the verbal structure of the contract, it reassesses the evidence of Gaius and, above all, Ulpian (D. 45.1.1.6) concerning bilingual stipulations and the use of languages other than Latin and Greek. Particular attention is devoted to the meaning of intellegere per interpretem and to the practical problems arising from the intervention of an interpreter, especially where misunderstandings affected the correspondence between interrogatio and responsio. The analysis suggests that the stipulatio per interpretem should be understood as part of the broader adaptation of Roman contractual forms to an increasingly multilingual legal and commercial environment.