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[German version] The Latin term for Manumission (C.), the freeing of slaves. Schiemann, Gottfried (Tübingen)

[German version] Tutelage played an important part in both Athenian (cf. epitropos [2]) and Roman law (cf. tutela [1]). It applied not only in respect of infants and impubes ('those under the age of discretion') not under the patria postestas ('paternal power'), but also in a wider context as a gender-based tutelage in respect of women ( Kyrios [II], Tutela, [1 III]). Schiemann, Gottfried (Tübingen)

[German version] Manus is used in Roman law in the sense of the ‘controlling and protecting hand’, expressing the family law concept of a relationship based on domination. Originally, manus may have described the hegemony of the head of the family ( pater familias ) not merely over his children ( patria potestas ) but also over his wife. Already in the Law of the Twelve Tables (5th cent. BC), however, paternal power is treated separately. The meaning of manus is accordingly restricted to the husband's relationship of power over his wife. Our best source for manus are the ‘Institutions’ of …

[German version] According to Varro, Ling. 5,151, the term carcer, i.e. a place for individual detention, is derived from coercere; it is thus linked to the magistracy's powers of   coercitio for the direct enforcement of its authority, and not the punishment of criminal misconduct. ‘The carcer has to be maintained for the detention, not the punishment of people’: carcer enim ad continendos homines, non ad puniendos haberi debet (Ulp. Dig. 48,19,8,7). Civil law offences and other obligations, for which the obligator was liable in person, were regulated by the XI…

[German version]  Adultery ( a.) in Roman law according to the l. Iulia de adulteriis coercendis was a matter for public criminal proceedings ( iudicium publicum). The factual proximity of this ruling to Augustus' other marriage legislation suggests that the law on adultery originates from the same year as the l. de maritandis ordinibus (18 BC). According to a report by Paulus (Coll. 4,2,2), from the late classical period, several earlier laws were rescinded by the l. Iulia. So adulterium must already have been prosecuted at the time of the Republic, probably by the holder of authority ( pat…

[German version] (pl. plebiscita). The resolutions of the assembly of the Roman plebs ( concilium ; plebs ). From the lex Hortensia (287 BC) onwards, these resolutions were equated with leges (laws, lex ) ( legibus exaequata sunt, Gai. Inst. 1,3) and were also so called. It can now be regarded as disproved that there existed any earlier general binding character to the plebiscitum (summary in [1. 61f.]). Over the following three cents., the plebiscitum formed the core of the entire Roman legislative process. This may partly have been because the convocation of a concilium plebis by the pe…

[German version] (the 'appraisal') in the Roman formula process was the upper limit to which the iudex ('judge') could set the sentence sum on conviction ( condemnatio ), by instruction of the praetor. The taxatio typically occurred in cases of (1) liability of the master for the property ( peculium ) of the slave or filiusfamilias from the actio de peculio or the actio de in rem verso, in respect of asset gains made by the action of such individuals under his power ( patria potestas ), (2) an exception sought by the debtor because of distress ( beneficium competentiae) and (3) an appeal for iniur…

[German version] Abbreviation of the all-inclusive designation N(umerius) N(egidius), which in Roman jurisprudence is used to describe the defendant; analogous to A.A. Schiemann, Gottfried (Tübingen)

[German version] ('liquidation of assets') is the model for the Roman collection of debts ( missio in possessionem ) executed against debtors in Roman law. If someone, esp. a tax collector ( publicani ), owed money to the state, all his assets were liquidated. The buyer had to assume the debt. The purchase price went to the treasury ( aerarium ). Guarantors ( praedes) whom the state debtor often had to procure were subject to SB as well. Debt Schiemann, Gottfried (Tübingen) Bibliography M. Kaser, K. Hackl, Das römische Zivilprozeßrecht 21996, 389 f.

[German version] In Graeco-Roman Antiquity banishment largely replaced the death penalty for members of the upper class, but also existed as an independent  punishment, as in the Attic ostrakismós . For details for Greece, particularly Athens, see phygḗ , aeiphygía , apeniautismós , for Rome see exilium , deportatio , relegatio . Schiemann, Gottfried (Tübingen)

[German version] Under Roman law the   pater familias generally held paternal authority over his children for as long as he lived. Releasing sons from the control of the pater was possible only by means of a formal and complicated legal process: the emancipatio. It was linked to formal alienation by   mancipatio , by which not only a dominus could sell his slaves but also a father his sons. By means of this ‘sale’ a father gave his sons into servitude with another pater. Even in the period of the Twelve Tablets (5th cent. BC) no suitable business practice other than the ‘sale’ …

[German version] according to the Digest title 48,2 is the charge in Roman criminal proceedings. The bearer of the accusatio is in that case a private person. This person first laid a charge (  delatio nominis ). In the later imperial period in an extra ordinem judicial criminal prosecution it was often the case that this was the sum total of the private share in the course of procedure. In the republican procedure (  quaestio ), on the other hand, the delator was always and, even later still regularly, a party after admission of the accusatio by the court magistrate ( receptio nominis) -- simil…

[German version] Roman freedmen, whose manumission ( Manumissio ) was deficient. For this reason the freedman did not receive citizenship and in general had an inferior legal status compared to other freedmen. The term Latini Iuniani ( LI) is derived from a lex Iunia ( Norbana?), probably of AD 19. It legally equated certain groups of freedmen with Latini coloniarii (holders of citizenship in a Latin colony). Therefore, they had no political rights (especially no voting rights) but were able to take part in legal transactions with Roman citizens because they had the commercium …

[German version] A couple's engagement in Roman law. The term appears to have derived from the fact that marriage in earlier times had been promised mutually through an official stipulatio (or through sponsio ) of the couple's fathers. In the late Republic and in the Principate, the sponsalia could be revoked freely and it was no longer possible to file a suit for marriage. Indirect commitments (e.g. contract penalties, Dig. 45,1,134 pr.) were abolished as well. Schiemann, Gottfried (Tübingen) Bibliography Honsell/Mayer-Maly/Selb, 392 f.  Treggiari, 145-160.

[German version] Under Roman law a unilateral promise to provide a dowry (  Dos ). Proculus (Dig. 50,16,125) gives the form of words used to make the promise: dotis filiae meae tibi erunt aurei centum (‘as dowry for my daughter you will have 100 gold pieces’). The words were said by the father or another male ancestor of the bride, or by herself, or by someone in her debt designated by her (such as a previous husband forced to return the dowry he himself had once received, following an actio rei uxoriae, a divorce). Despite its one-sided declaration the dictio dotis was considered a settlement…

[German version] The PS, the substituted child, played a considerable part in Roman legislation and legal science. This could be easily explained in view of the consequences of legitimate birth in terms of status, civil law and succession. Until the early Imperial period (1st cent. AD) it seems that the problem of dubious birth was mostly resolved within the family: The father, as part of his paternal power ( patria potestas ), had the right to expose newborn children (Exposure of children). Whether an explicit acceptance by the father of the child was required by picking up the child ( toller…

[German version] In Roman law, thesaurus refers to a treasure found by someone (Just. Epit.. 2,1,39). The Late Classical jurist Iulius [IV 16] Paulus (early 3rd cent. AD) uses the term thensaurus, which he defined as "money that was put away so far back in the past that no memory of it exists and it therefore no longer has an owner" ( vetus quaedam depositio pecuniae, cuius non existat memoria, ut iam dominium non habeat, Dig. 41,1,31,1). However, not only money but any type of valuable object was regarded as a thesaurus. Why a Greek loan-word was used for this can no longer be deter…

[German version] [1] Masks see Masks Schiemann, Gottfried (Tübingen) [German version] [2] Legal In modern parlance, persona is indeed a loan word received from Latin; however, persona in Latin certainly did not have the central meaning that it now conveys in modern legal culture based on rational law (cf. Person). In Ulp. Dig. 50,17,22 pr., Ulpian does indeed mention a persona servilis, that is, the personality (even) of a slave. However, this is in connection with the conclusion that slaves are not entitled to any legal claims. Rather, the slave was -- a…

('subscription, signature'). [German version] I. Ancient legal documents The 'subscription/signature' (Gk. ὑπογραφή/ hypographḗ, Lat. subscriptio.) is an element of ancient documents. From the 2nd cent. BC onwards, private documents on papyrus in Egypt were given a signature ( hypographḗ). This probably not only consisted of the mark or full written name, but also contained a brief recapitulation of the most important content of the document, e.g. the admission of owing a certain amount of money. Thus the debtor indicated his awareness of the obligation assumed. However, the subsc…

[German version] The dissolution of marriage through divorce appears to have been possible everywhere in antiquity from Mesopotamia to Rome, of course not always in the same way for men and women. Thus in Egypt in the 1st millennium BC it was possible for women as well as men to make a declaration of divorce; in ancient Jewish law, as probably also in Mesopotamia, on the other hand, the repudiation was only declared by the husband. In any case, Jewish law also linked the dissolution of the marriag…

[German version] in antiquity is both the subject of pragmatic politics ( Law, codification) and theoretical reflection (political science and legal philosophy). The latter was first discussed by the Greeks (as nomothesía) and immediately reached an intellectual high point, especially in Plato's [1] late work on laws ( Nómoi). Plato's opinion of lawgiving, as is also related by Cicero in his theory of lawgiving ( De legibus), had a sustained effect on Roman Imperial lawgiving and, therefore, on European legal science after the reception of Roman law beginning …

[German version] ('Punishment') is used in Roman law similarly to poena , but confined to 'public' punishment (Penal Law) and more specifically the death penalty. One can only speculate on how supplicium (originally probably a plea for forgiveness) came to acquire the meaning of a punishment. The Twelve Tables (5th cent. BC) do recognize the death penalty in some cases, but primarily as a private punishment; it is not called supplicium in reports on the law. A supplicium more maiorum ('punishment according to the tradition of the forefathers') is mentioned several times i…

[German version] I. Term Volksrecht, a term coined by L. Mitteis [1. 4-9] in 1891, refers to the local legal traditions in the provinces of the Imperium Romanum in contrast to Roman law as Reichsrecht. Conferment of Roman citizenship ( civitas [2]) on (virtually?) all free inhabitants of the empire by the Constitutio Antoniniana (AD 212; see [2; 3]), contrary to some sources (e.g. Theod. Gr. aff. Cur. 9,13 Raeder), did not result in an orientation of provincial legal life towards Roman law. This has been proven by papyri, inscriptions, and by legal opinions from imperial rescripts ( rescript…

[German version] The term iuridicus (‘person employed in law’) appears in sources of the Roman Imperial period with very different meanings. 1. From Hadrian, perhaps even Vespasian, iuridici provinciae, more frequently called legati iuridici, appear in imperial provinces. They are representatives of the provincial governor's jurisdiction, sometimes for the whole province, sometimes only for districts. It is disputed whether the juridical powers of the iuridicus were merely derived from the governor (e.g. [1. 1149]) or were genuine imperial powers (as in [2]). 2. The iuridicus …

[German version] Libel was prosecuted as serious injury to the character in both Greek (Attic) and Roman law. In Athens, libel may have come under kakēgoría (cf. also loidoría ) and have led to a fine in a private suit. In Roman law, libel was likewise a civil offence as a form of iniuria (a wrongful act). Possibly related to libel was the carmen famosum (‘defamatory poem’) of the Twelve Tables ( tabulae duodecim ). An aggravated form of libel was the Roman calumnia (false accusation), which could lead to harsh punishments. Schiemann, Gottfried (Tübingen)

[German version] The origin of the ancient law of war, like that of international law, cannot be attributed to a particular event or treaty. Already before the Greek and Roman periods there were concepts and customs that may retrospectively be understood as part of a law of war. Thus, in ancient Mesopotamia and Homeric Greece, taking spoils was considered legitimate, and a particularly important part of the spoils was the enslavement of prisoners of war and subjugated peoples ( War booty). The OT …

[German version] (from divertere, to turn away) is divorce in Roman law. Its basis is clearly set out in a rescript of Alexander Severus in AD 223 (Cod. Iust. 8,38,2): libera matrimonia esse antiquitus placuit (it was recognized of old that marriage is free). Whether this was true of marriages in the early times that were celebrated with special rites is doubtful. But even here extant sources mention that provision was made for a form of divorce (  diffarreatio ). The ‘freedom’ of marriage meant in particular that no grounds were required for its dissolu…

[German version] is the ownership of land - perhaps better described as ‘soldiers' tenure’ - to which military obligations were attached: whether armed service by the owner or the recruiting and equipping of soldiers (as representatives of the owner, so to speak). Military tenure (MT) in this sense occurred particularly in the Ancient Orient. It is relatively well recorded for the Persian empire of the Achaemenidae [2] (6th-4th cents. BC) and the Hittite empire ( Ḫattusa II.); Egyptian military co…

I. General [German version] A. Term In legal terms, a document is a written declaration regarding a legal transaction. In modern opinion it is a declaration of intent in a suitable written form that is intended to provide proof in legal transactions and that permits recognition of the issuing party (e.g., [2; 8]). In general, documents include all non-literary and partially literary texts (exceptions are, e.g., poetry and amulets), i.e., apart from business documents, trial and administrative document…

[German version] In Roman law the crime of forgery. Gell. NA 20,1,53 calls the false bearing of a witness, which according to the XII Tables was punishable with death, testimonium falsum. However this probably had nothing to do with the criminal acts for which Sulla (probably in 81 BC) introduced a public suit ( quaestio de falso) in the lex Cornelia testamentaria nummaria (Dig. 48,10). The jurisprudence of the Imperial period dealt not just with the forging of wills and the counterfeiting of coins as Sulla's law but also for example with the bribing of wi…

[German version] Besides nuptiae the Roman term for marriage. Matrimonium (‘motherhood’) was associated with the root mater (‘mother’), from which the word is derived. Linguistically, a woman was led or given into matrimonium, and a man had a woman in matrimonio. In law, too, matrimonium was primarily significant because of motherhood: iustum (recognised by law) or legitimum (lawful) matrimonium is a marriage between Roman citizens or between a Roman and a woman who was entitled to conubium . The children of such a marriage were Roman citizens, and their status followed the ius civile, …

[German version] A. Overview Furtum is the offence against property in Roman law. At least in the classical period (1st-3rd cents. AD) the term furtum includes not only theft and embezzlement, but also the mere use of items that are not one's own ( furti usus), the removal of one's own property, e.g. from a collateral creditor ( furtum possessionis, possession theft), fraud, receiving stolen goods and aiding and abetting the perpetrator of a furtum. The object of furtum could in addition to res corporales be slaves and persons under paternal authority. In the classical period, …

[German version] Fictio, rooted in Roman jurisprudence, describes a technique still used in modern legal practice in order to arrange sanctions for different circumstances from those originally addressed by the law through working on the assumption that both sets of circumstances are identical, even though in reality they are not. This concept developed from the religious rule stating simulacra pro veris accipiuntur (‘images are accepted as reality’): Priests as the first legal experts in Rome's early history transferred the concept expressed in this reli…

[German version] Little is known about the origin and spread of crucifixion in ancient legal systems. There is probably no evidence for it in classical Greece [1]. Herodotus (1,128; 4,43; 202) reports on it as a form of execution among the barbarians, Polybius (1,24,6) among the Phoenicians. Little likely is the idea of the Romans adopting it directly from the Phoenicians [2] (differing views in [3; 4]). Crucifixion however does come to be used as capital punishment among the Romans from about 200 BC (cf. Plaut. Mil. 359). The   tresviri capitales probably introduce…

[German version] The SRLB is a juristic collection of Late Antiquity which survives in several Syriac, Arabic and Armenian versions of differing scope. It was widespread in the territory of the Oriental churches, but contained secular Roman law. The interest in imperial law in the eastern provinces makes itself felt in terms of the history of transmission, first in the Sententiae Syriacae, a paraphrase of imperial laws, esp. from the reign of Diocletian and primarily from the years AD 293/4. The translation into Syriac was not directly from the (lost) Lat…

[German version] In Roman law the punishable act of substituting children, partus suppositus . Schiemann, Gottfried (Tübingen)

[German version] was probably not a technical term at first (therefore also c. venalitium, c. specierum). It referred to the public purchases of provisions for the Roman State, primarily concerning military equipment and public grain supplies ( Logistics,   cura annonae ). Comparatio publica (CP) did not become a legal category until the Cod. Theod. (under headings 11,15). There, it is designated as a highly regulated type of business including sales obligations (in modern law: contract obligations) and exact price …

[German version] [1] (Religion) see Bible; Christianity; New Testament Apocrypha; Septuagint; Testamentary literature; Vulgate (Religion) see Bible; Christianity; New Testament Apocrypha; Septuagint; Testamentary literature; Vulgate Hengstl, Joachim (Marburg/Lahn) [German version] [2] History of law (History of law) Hengstl, Joachim (Marburg/Lahn) [German version] I. General Testament (from the Latin testamentum in the sense of the final will made before witnesses; see below IV.) denotes a unilateral 'last will and testament' (or, in common E…

[German version] (Burning at the stake) was a form of Roman capital punishment. The execution may originally have been left to the injured party and his agnates (  agnatio ) in a kind of ‘channelled’ private revenge. In that case, the criminal proceedings served only to establish the prosecutor's right to carry out the private punishment. This is probably how we should understand Gaius' report in his comm. on the Twelve Tables (Dig. 47,9,9), which states that this law (pl. 8,10) ordered execution by fire for premeditated arsons: igni necari iubetur (interpretation according to [1], b…

[German version] (also gesta). Generally an expression for transactions relevant to business (not necessarily legal transactions). In Roman civil law the following are significant: (1) the pro herede gestio (behaviour as an heir), informal behaviour (e.g. taking possession) as an expression of the desire to come into an inheritance ( Succession, law of). (2) the negotiorum gestio (modern law: conducting business without a commission). In Roman law it concerns all affairs in the conduct of someone else's transactions that are not commissioned (  mandatum ) or…

[German version] The abolitio, which has come down to us in the Digest title 48,16, is in Roman law discontinuation of criminal proceedings, often with the effect of a pardon (  indulgentia ), but mainly with the possibility of renewing the charge, as with the abolitio publica, ordered by the Senate or in exceptional cases by the emperor, and the abolitio privata, pronounced by the judge at the request of a private prosecutor. The abolitio ex lege, for example, takes effect on the death of the prosecutor. In any event this first appears under the designation abolitio in the imperial period…

[German version] In contrast to the  land register that existed ─ probably based on an Old Egyptian model [1] ─ in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt (and, in antiquity, possibly only there) as a safeguard for private property transactions, the primary purpose of estate registers (ER) and similar registers was the levy of land taxes as well as the administration of state leases. Thus, almost inevitably, they were just as widespread as those very forms of state income. A prerequisite for starting up archive…

[German version] A. Public criminal prosecution The legal technical category in classical Roman jurisprudence of the Principate applied to public criminal procedures ( iudicium publicum) where crimes were prosecuted based upon accusation (  accusatio ). As with civil legal forms in Roman Law, it is not a characteristic routine legal transaction but should rather be understood as a means of attack and defence in a trial (  actio ,   exceptio ). The meaning of the term crimen predominantly lies in the procedural field. Therefore, crimen appears most frequently in the sources in co…

[German version] In Roman law, the actus contrarius ('reversion') of the mancipatio (formal alienation). It served, for instance, for the return of objects given for fiduciary safekeeping ( fiducia ). The remancipatio was also a constituent act in the complex ceremonies of the emancipatio (release from the family group). Above all, however, it was an important element in divorce proceedings in the old manus marriage (cf. also Marriage III): if such a marriage was to be dissolved, the wife had to be released from the special authority of the husband. This remancipatio consisted of a ce…

[German version] In Roman law, legally incapable of being a witness ( testis). The Inst. Iust. (2,10,6) lists as intestabiles: women, minors, slaves, the dumb, the deaf, the mentally ill, legally incapacitated wastrels and those who had been declared improbus (dishonourable) and intestabilis by a special law. Legal arrangements of this kind result, for example, (according to Ulp. Dig. 47,10,5,9) from the lex Cornelia de iniuriis against authors or distributors of articles with offensive content or (according to Cassius Dig. 1,9,2) from the lex Iulia de repetundis against those re…

[German version] In the confusio (the ‘merging’) the same person is both debtor and creditor or owner and holder of a limited material right, e.g. a usufruct. In Roman law confusio led to the extinction of the claim or the right. The late classic jurists (3rd cent. AD) occasionally use the term consolidatio for confusio without creating material distinctions. The effect of the confusio could not be prevented by the will of the parties. However, the Roman jurists occasionally assume a duty to refound the claim or right. The opinion of the Proculians ( Law schools) that the   noxalis actio …

[German version] While the word pater familias indicates a clearly defined legal status, the designation of the Roman mother of a family is a social rather than a legal one. Originally, MF was the honorary title for a married woman living in the → manus (marital control) of her husband, with whom she had children. Her social position was, in contrast with (and in compensation for) her legal status ( Manus), a high one. She had precedence over all other members of the household apart from her husband. By the time the manus marriage had fallen into disuse, the term MF - literally the mot…

[German version] I. Ancient Near East The Sumerian-Akkadian terminology regarding punishment and criminal law implies that in Mesopotamia, this was already understood to be a consequence of mischief [1. 77 with note 35], directed either against the divine order [2] or the (state-sanctioned) political and social structures [3]. The same is true of Egypt [4. 68]. There was no distinction between civil and criminal law in the modern sense. The relationship between private law and so-called public law (an…

[German version] (more complete: minores viginti quinque annis; singular: minor) in Roman law those under the age of 25. In a narrower (and originally technical) meaning, persons aged 15 to 24 were called minores, in a broader sense anyone who had not reached the age of majority (at least 25 in Roman law). The legal regulations for minores in the narrow sense concerned their ability to enter into contracts and other legal transactions (contractual capacity). This must be distinguished from legal capacity, that is the ability to establish and acquire r…

I. Literary history [German version] A. General Classicism, a term formed early in the 19th cent. analogous and antithetically to ‘Romanticism’, initially means the same as the later neologism ‘classical period’: ‘highest perfection’, which was first attested in 1887 [1. 154] and in both English and French is still recognizable in the remaining ambivalence of the term classicism, especially in the contrast of ‘classicism/neo-classicism’ or ‘classicisme/néoclassicisme’ [2. 3, 5f.]. However, in the typol…

I. Ancient Orient [German version] A. General The term civil law (CL), which is derived from Roman law, covers the legal position of individuals in legal transactions and with respect to family and society. Depending on the definition, family and inheritance law are part of CL.  Legal texts in cuneiform -- as opposed to mature Roman law -- as a pre-scientific legal system are legal institutions derived from practice -- the modern categories used here are anachronistic. Sources and preliminary work on t…

(μόρα; mόra). [German version] [1] Division of the Spartan army In the Spartan army no later than from 403 to 371 BC mora was the usual term for the six largest divisions of the infantry and cavalry assigned to it (Xen. Lac. pol. 11,4; Xen. Hell. 2,4,31; 4,5,3-19; Diod. 15,32,1). Each mora was commanded by a polémarchos   (Xen. hell. 4,4,7; 5,4,51), had a required strength of more than 1,000 men and was organised into lochoi ( lóchos). Burckhardt, Leonhard (Basle) Bibliography 1 J.F. Lazenby, The Spartan Army, 1985, 5ff. [German version] [2] Default in Roman law Default in Roman law. Schiemann…

[German version] In Roman legal history critique of interpolation specifically refers to the examination of the transmitted version of the texts of the Corpus Iuris for falsifications compared with the original. This is of particular relevance to the fragments from the writings of the classical jurists (1st cent. BC - 3rd cent. AD) in the  Digesta , but also to the  Institutiones in comparison to their models and even to the older imperial pronouncements collected in the  Codex Iustinianus . With regard to the Digesta, emperor Justinian himself had already given an express…

[German version] (perhaps from peregre, 'outside the fields', namely the territory of Rome) was the most important technical term of Roman law referring to foreigners (Aliens, the position of), who did not belong to the community of rights of the Roman citizens ( civitas ) but who was nevertheless an enemy or completely without rights. The dediticii , who as members of communities subjected by Rome had been given neither Roman nor Latin citizen law (Latin law), were sometimes partially distinguished from peregrini, and sometimes treated as a special group of peregrini In the time of t…

[German version] [1] Public announcement by magistrates Edictum (from edicere) is a binding public announcement by Roman office bearers (  magistratus ), which presented either concrete orders or a ‘governmental agenda’ [1. 58] for the coming term of office. The word suggests an originally oral announcement [2. 178], but the historically documented form is a recording on an   album (‘white wooden plate’) at the magistrate's office. Literary tradition refers to edicts by   consules ,   aediles ,   praetores , provincial governors, tribuni plebis (  tribunus ),   censores …

[German version] Technical term for the listing of sources at the beginning of the fragments of the digests (  Digesta ) and of the constitutions in the Codex Iustinianus ( Codex II C). The Digesta list the author from the Classical period (e.g. Ulpian), his work (e.g. ad edictum = edict commentary), and the number of the ‘book’ (e.g. libro quinto for 5th bk.); the Codex Iustinianus - as already the Codex Theodosianus - lists the emperor who enacted the respective constitution and the addressee. The inscriptiones in the Digesta were the most important sources for reconstructing the…

[German version] ('right to return home', more common in the combination ius postliminii) is explained in Just. Epit. 1,12,5 as deriving from limen (threshold), and this was supposed to have been metaphorically transferred to the boundary of Roman state territory, so that a prisoner of war, who on his return would be crossing back from beyond ( post) the 'threshold' into the Roman state, would have the right to return to his earlier position before being taken prisoner. On being taken captive by enemies (Prisoners of war), a Roman citizen would become…

[German version] The person who ‘reports’ something to a Roman authority, but in its narrower sense, esp. with regard to the   delatio nominis , the accuser. Considerable advantages were in prospect for the successful delator: as a rule, in the event of a guilty verdict he received a monetary reward in the form of a proportion of the accused man's property ([1]; with additional information in [2]). This naturally resulted in all kinds of abuse (cf. Cic. Rosc. Am. 55: Roscius was probably accused of political corruption in order t…

[German version] The Romans used the word capitale whenever the  death penalty (also poena capitis) was concerned: for the crime itself, the legal process, as well as in passing and executing a sentence, but also for the loss of personal freedom or citizenship (  deminutio capitis ) and particularly with reference to exile (  exilium ), when -- from the late Republican period -- this indeed replaced the death penalty for Roman citizens. Schiemann, Gottfried (Tübingen) Bibliography E. Cantarella, I supplizi capitali in Grecia e a Roma, 1991.

[German version] In the history of Roman politics and the ruler cult, parens (literally: either physical parent, in reality, the father) is, in the combination parens patriae (father of the fatherland), a linguistic forerunner of the exalted name for the emperor pater patriae . The best-known example of its use is in 63 BC when the title parens patriae was bestowed on Cicero by Q. Lutatius [4] Catulus in the Senate after the suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy (Cic. Sest. 121; Cic. Pis. 6). The title meant that Cicero had saved the Republic. Thi…

[German version] A. Historical foundations In a legal history sense, torture in Antiquity can be understood primarily as a means for eliciting evidence. Furthermore, torture occurs as a(n additional) punishment. The origins of the legally recognized use of torture is obscure. In the Babylonian law Code of Hammurabi (Cuneiform, legal texts in), for instance, there is no mention of torture at all [1]. By contrast, it was widespread in Greece. The Greek expression for the use of torture, βασανίζειν ( basanízein) is probably a loanword from the Orient, however, so that torture …

[German version] The services (more precisely: the daily duties) Roman ex-slaves were obliged to perform for their patron ( p atronus ) after their manumission. The phenomenon of servitude for freed people is also known from other ancient slave-holder societies ( paramonḗ ). OL did not result from the slave-patron relationship itself. Rather, freed men and -women were obliged by oath to their manumitters and repeated the obligation after being set free either in the same form or by  stipulatio . Only by means of this repetition could undertaking of OL bec…

[German version] Latin   crux or damnatio in crucem (‘sentencing to crucifixion’), Greek during the Hellenistic period ἀνασταύρωσις/ anastaúrōsis (which, however, in Hdt. 3,125 and probably also in Xenophon [10] of Ephesos 4,2 means ‘impaling’) was only one of several ways of exacting the  death penalty (II) in the Roman empire. It probably originated as deterrence against slaves in the context of the   coercitio (‘power of coercion’) by the   tresviri [1] capitales. Damnatio in crucem was perhaps based on Oriental and Punic precedents. At the time of the crucifixion of…

[German version] (also Vindex: Pompon. Dig. 1,2,2,24). A mythical figure in Roman historiography, e.g. Liv. 2,4,5-10. As a slave, V. is supposed to have discovered a plot by the Tarquinii (cf. Tarquinius [7; 12]) in 509 BC to restore rule by kings. As a reward he is supposed to have been freed and admitted to the status of Roman citizen. It is possible that these legends served as a 'historical' explanation for the fact that under Roman law manumission led to the acquisition of citizenship, and not…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient Codification of law, in the sense of the comprehensive and conclusive regulation of a major and more or less finite subject area, must be discounted for pre- and extra-Roman cultures, regardless of all ancient pronouncements (Egypt: Diod. Sic. 1,95,4f.; Greece: Aristot. Ath. Pol. 2,1273a 35 - 1274b 25) and modern discussions (‘Law of Ḫammurapi’: [11; 13]; Achaemenid empire: [4; 14; 16]) (see the articles in [5]; also [6; 13]). The collection, systematization or uni…

[German version] From a legal perspective, the head of a family in Rome was the most important person in the family (IV.B.), its 'king' as it were [1. 75]. As holder of patria potestas and manus , he held power at any rate over wife, children (even when adult), grandchildren and slaves. As the autocrat of the family, he was the only member to hold rights and privileges: he alone had the right to dispose of the family's property and only he acquired rights from contracts and other transactions. However, he incur…

[German version] I. General Robbery is the appropriation of a moveable object belonging to another with violence against that person or by the use of threats with present danger to life and limb and with intent to appropriate the object in contravention of the law (§ 249 German Criminal Code). In law, robbery is a combination of theft and duress. In the popular mind of today, robbery is regarded as a more serious offence than simple theft. However, in ancient legal systems and until the Middle Ages, theft (by stealth) was seen as worse than (public and violent) dispossession. Hengstl, Joachi…

[German version] A technical term in Roman law, and as such not to be understood in the broad sense of 'privilege' in the medieval and early modern periods, still less to be equated with the same word in modern colloquial usage, Roman privilegium was a 'law for an individual', and according to the Twelve Tables (tab. 9,1) impermissible as a law of proscription at the expense of an individual: it was forbidden to propose it in the popular assembly ( ne inroganto, Cic. Leg. 3,4,11). During the Principate, prerogatives of certain institutions and groups of people were denoted by means of privilegi…

[German version] The oath to be sworn to Roman law (  ius ) or before the court (at the praetor or iudex). The older type of oath is probably the   sacramentum , which however, from the late Republic onwards with the dying out of the legis actio sacramento, essentially described the soldier's oath. The ius iurandum was sworn by  Jupiter, all the gods or by the  genius of the emperor. The magistrates swore the existing laws with a ius iurandum in leges within five days of taking up office, and magistrates stepping down usually also swore the legitimacy of their administration …

[German version] I. Ancient Orient The requesting of a surety to secure a contract is documented in the laws of the Ancient Orient to varying degrees. Requiring a pledge plays a large role in debt trials in agrarian societies. For example, if tenants were in arrears with their obligations, the forfeiting of a personal surety often led to debt-bondage [1; 2; 15. 179f.] with the resultant negative consequences for the social balance of a society ( Leasehold I.). The requesting of a pledge has been documented in cuneiform legal texts by documents of varying complexity from t…

[German version] (‘One who apportions endowments’). From the 2nd cent. BC or earlier war spoils of the Roman state were occasionally distributed among the people of Rome. In the absence of an official ‘Body of Apportionment’ it fell to private citizens, divisores, to assume that function. By the end of the Republic this had led to a system of canvassing that has been described in detail in Cicero Planc. 48ff. Divisores promised in single   tribus a ‘reward’ to a sufficient number of tribus members in the event of a particular candidate being elected. If the tribus was won over and the cand…

[German version] I. Introduction After the supersession of the concept that the ideal economic form was an autarkic entity of production and consumption not depending upon trade (e.g. the Homeric oîkos), and after the invention of means of payment - whether in the form of unstamped precious metals or coins - purchase, i.e. the exchange of goods for money, was a self-evident element of ancient societies. In spite of its presumably general distribution, however, purchase was underdeveloped in terms of legal provision. Laws and…

('Twelve Tables', or, more completely, lex duodecim tabularum, 'Law of the Twelve Tables'), the most important legislation of the Roman Republic. The name originates in the tradition that they were written on twelve oak ( roboreas, as it ought to read, rather than eboreas, 'ivory', in Pompon. Dig. 1,2,2,4) tablets. However, they have not survived in epigraphic form. Text and content must be reconstructed from ancient literature. It may be assumed, in the light of accounts of the legislative process in ancient authors (esp. Liv. 3,32 ff.), that they were written around 450 BC. …

[German version] The childless who, according to Roman law dating from the time of Augustus, suffered certain legal penalties: to promote a higher birthrate, women who had many children benefited through the lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus and the lex Papia ( ius liberorum ), while on the flip-side childless people (men and women) were restricted in their capacity ( capacitas) to accept inheritances and legacies: what was left to orbi under a will, was halved (in the case of a surviving spouse reduced to a tenth). The remainder, known as the caducum (a lapsed inher…

[German version] In Rome the suspension of judicial activity generally ordered by a magistrate (the highest present in Rome) with an edict and associated with further restrictions of transactions, e.g. the closure of the state treasury (  aerarium , Cic. Har. resp. 55) or the stores in the Forum (Liv. 9,7,8). By the late Republic this order had to be preceded by a resolution of the Senate (Liv. 3,3,6). The iustitium was not solely an emergency measure but already in the Republican period could be caused by public mourning over a military defeat (Liv. 9,7,8) or the…

[German version] has two meanings in Roman law: one describing a ‘measure’ primarily of land, the other - according to the matter in hand - the same as the modern concept of an instruction (on a gift or testamentary benefit). M. agri (the land measure) was the subject of a well-known action from Paul. sent. 2,17,4  ( actio de modo agri): if the price of a piece of land was calculated according to its area, the purchaser could demand from the seller double the proportional price as a private penalty, if it transpired that the area was smaller than stated.…