| dc.description.abstract | Magic is all that is before the law. The regulating forces of the very first human
societies were imbued with magic. In fact, the only tool that man had in the timeless
past as a link between the community and phenomena was magic. The law itself was
magical.
In Roman society for the duration of its existence magic was an element
perhaps nocturnal but constantly present. In the archaic age magic was the
immediate religion. The King himself was indeed a priest but also a magician,
a tradition that would remain until the Middle Ages with the healing kings, the
Wizarding Or Magi Kings.
Since the twelfth tables we speak of magic (VII Iqui fruges excantassit) that is,
those who appropriated themselves with the magic of a neighbor's crop were
punished. However, a white magic was distinguished from a black magic. The
first was and was admitted for a long time, the second had always been
condemned.
The aim of the thesis was to understand through the lens of magic the evolution
of Roman society but above all of Roman law. That after a strongly religious
archaic phase, it became secularized during the republic, finally returning to
being a strongly religious right in the twilight of experience.
Magic, the repression of the same is an excellent litmus test.
The thesis is organized in 4 parts
Origins, with XII tables and Lex Cornelia de Sicariis et veneficis (Silla
81 ac)
Some Trials: Matron, Libone (cognitio extra ordinem;quoted by
Tacitus:Libone noble Pompeian almost symbol of the republican
resistance against the imperial power – he had questioned a
necromancer to know the future of the emperor – he claimed suicide
and suffered the damnatio memoriae),Apuleius
Christianity and Magic Culture (heresy and magic and Constantine)
Constantine "Bishop of Non-Christians" attacked magic to
destabilize paganism. He tried to maintain a balance that was
more substantial than formal. Magic = Superstition. C.Th. 9.16.1
and 9.16.2, two constitutions that punished private haruspicking.
Nor could one take auspices at the time of installing a public office.
It rehabilitates the figure of the whistleblower who in general had
often been superimposed on that of the slanderer in Roman law.
"almost" agentes in rebus, who to earn rewards made delation
almost a profession. This drift of 'amateur' spies, evidently
escaped from state control, will then be effectively crushed by a
constitution of 380 (C.Th. 10.10.13), which provided that the
whistleblower after three accusations, even founded (!), was
beheaded. In the second constitution the tones are more tenuous,
the recipient is not the senate but the Roman people.
C.Th. 16. 10.1 Request for haruspicin for lightning that had struck
the imperial palace. The constitutions just analyzed seem to reveal
a contradictory, pernicious, often illogical vision of Constantinian
power over haruspicin287. If in some ways, in fact, such activity is
denigrated as superstitio (C.Th. 9.16.1), as a legacy of old practices
(C.Th. 9.16.2), and in this sense punished even harshly if officiated
in private, on the other hand it remains admitted when it is public.
Even ordered as necessary in the case of the electrocuted palace
C.Th. 9.16.3 only negative magic is punished
Repression in the late antique West with the constitutions collected in
the Theodosian and Justinian.
The thesis therefore has as its object to demonstrate how in Roman law, accepting
the historical, social and religious differences, it has elastically disciplined magic in a
very different way over the centuries. In addition, an attempt has been made to bring
together in a reasoned way the Roman normative production on the theme of magic;
from the origins to the twilight of Roman history. [edited by Author] | it_IT |
