Lex Cornelia de maiestate

The Lex Cornelia de maiestate (also lex Cornelia Sullae maiestatis ) was a repetition law of the Roman dictator Sulla from the year 81 BC introduced by a tribune that gave it its name . Chr.

The law regulated questions of provincial administration and the powers of a governor and punished various violations as high treason . The law belonging to Sulla's penal legislation prohibited the governor of a province , who was always at the same time the military commander in chief, from crossing the borders of his sovereign territory and starting arbitrary acts of war if there was no Senate or popular resolution . On the other hand, it was also punishable if the provincial governor did not leave the province within 30 days of his successor arriving. As evidenced by the surviving contemporary comments by Asconius Pedianus, who often reflected on Marcus Tullius Cicero , in “Pro Cornelio de maiestate”, the law provided for many other individual offenses , including the punishment of maiestatem minuere .

Sulla had reformed the judiciary and established courts to implement the law more efficiently. The quaestio perpetua de maiestate was established as a permanent institute for legal proceedings that concerned the violation of the integrity of the Roman community . The lex Cornelia de maiestate definitely had a predecessor (like the lex Appuleia ), but one looks in vain for a clear definition of the group of perpetrators or the facts. Rather, they served as flexible political instruments than to protect the res publica . Traces of a crimen maiestatis cannot be traced back to the XII tablets . This is why the concept of the “crime of the insulted popular majesty” only gradually emerged in the later republic. Sulla redefined the traditional crimen perduellionis , which had previously been negotiated in separate court proceedings for high treason, into a criminal offense, which also named the perpetrators (senators and officials ) and the acts relevant to the offense.

In 59 BC The law was taken up by the Julian lex de repetundis and expanded to include blackmail in office. It was used in the high treason trial against Aulus Gabinius , who during his term of office and the senatorial decision reservation as well as oracles had against leaving the territory of Syria assigned to him and also exposed himself to the charges of extortion.

See also

• Roman criminal law and criminal procedure law

literature

• Wolfgang Haase, Hildegard Temporini-Countess Vitzthum , Joseph Vogt : Rise and Fall of the Roman World (ANRW) . History and culture of Rome as reflected in recent research. Literature of the Augustan period: individual authors , Part 2, Volume 31 - Part 3, Volume 31, De Gruyter, 1981, ISBN 978-31-1008-467-2 .

Remarks

1. ↑ Claudia Klodt : Cicero's speech Pro Rabirio Postumo: Introduction and Commentary , Contributions to Antiquity , Volume 24, BG Teubner Stuttgart, 1992, p. 53 f.
2. ^ Cicero , In Pisonem 50.
3. ^ Wolfram Letzner : Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Attempt a biography . In: Writings on the history of antiquity , Volume 1, Münster 2000, ISBN 3-8258-5041-2 , p. 284 f; attributed to: Cicero, Epistulae ad familiares 3, 6, 3.
4. ↑ Arthur Keaveney : Sulla. The Last Republican , London 1982, p. 171.
5. ^ Pedianus: Pro Cornelio de maiestate
6. ↑ Karl Eduard Zachariae von Lingenthal : Lucius Cornelius Sulla, called the lucky one, as a steward of the Roman free state, second division (Sulla's ordinances) . Heidelberg 1834, p. 128 ff.
7. ↑ Plutarch : Pompey , 25. 48.