On 2 March 2013 Robert Feenstra, Emeritus Professor of Roman Law and its History at the University of Leyden, died aged 92. 'Brave to the last moment, debilitated by illness, but still strong and clear of mind' read the official death notice issued by his family. One of the greatest legal historians was no more - and Margreet Ahsmann, one of his former doctoral students and now a judge and senior vice-president of the court in the Hague, put into words the feeling that all who knew him experienced when they heard the news: he had been so much a part of our lives for so long, that somehow we all, quite unreasonably, thought that he would always be there.