He did not have the administrative apparatus to reproduce Roman systems of government, with its Senate, officials, judges, and courts, but he could make laws. The Lex Salica might have started as a list of penalties and tribal customs, but a Latin text could be presented as something grander, the work of an authoritative king. It demonstrated that the ruler was governing properly, as the Roman emperors had done before him. Lawmaking, as one scholar has put it, was an exercise in image-building.13
