Influence is a curious thing. On the personal level, it's plain unpredictable where a person will gather it from. When it comes to larger trends and fields of study or art, it's still wild, but at least hemmed in by sheer size.
For example, just how much influence did Roman legal education have on medieval romance? From what he writes in the History of Education in Antiquity, you'd think the answer is "quite a lot." At first brush, this is a tempting idea, too. Practice cases in Roman legal training were paradoxical hypothetical situations that sound like arcs from modern soap operas (which probably grew out of medieval romances in some way).
The connection between the roots of genre fiction and Roman legal training also make me wonder if that is why so many law students/lawyers get into genre fiction (Guy Gavriel Kay and Terry Brooks among them). Fantasy and science fiction are the modern day equivalents of medieval romance (knights, court intrigue, quests, magic, et c.) after all.
However. Given that many of Menander's plays have plots that are as closely knit as Rome's practice legal cases, Marrou is probably overstating the influence of Rome's legal training on medieval romance. Plus, ancient Greek and Roman novels are known to have existed, the plots of which could probably be revived in Greek soap operas without anyone noticing.
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