Pater patriae e maiestas: un possibile nuovo modello normativo

Abstract

The paper examines the concepts of pater patriae and maiestas, as new models of normative schemes. The survey, part of a larger study, aims to express the first impressions of the change we are witnessing between the end of the Republic and the beginning of the ‘Principato’. From a juridical point of view, the first historical period was influenced by dictatorships that alternated and also marked a new modus agendi, introducing rhetorical concepts and categories in the legislation, read differently, centered on the personalization of power. Contrary to what may appear, the emperors of the first phase of the principality, in many ways, sought to orient these concepts in a less personal ideological context. In any case, prudentes seem to bring the crimina born from such mechanisms, in particular, laesa maiestas, in the wake of typicality, as technical as possible, limiting the scope of its application. The severians are the last jurists to put themselves in dialectical ways, through law, with the central power. Subsequently, as soon as this confrontation ceases, the attempts to bring back these concepts, especially the maiestas, within the framework of the stricti iuris ratio will cease