The paper is an attempt to answer the fundamental question whether there is any rationale behind studying Roman law for the sake of modern science and the teaching of law. In the first part of the paper, the possibility of rejecting reading Roman law as being useless from the point of view of contemporary jurisprudence is considered. It is also proposed that the current state of affairs is the result of implementation in legal history studies of R. Zimmermann’s vision that Roman law and comparative law are two useful instruments for harmonising private law. Further, a claim is made that the outcome of the discussions on the harmonisation of private law, the so-called Common Frame of Reference has been developed with no references to the acc...