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Sponsione Provocare: Its Place in Roman Litigation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

John Crook
John Crook
Affiliation:
St. John's College, Cambridge
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Extract

Two of the Herculaneum Tablets, though fragmentary and obscure, furnish evidence that justifies a re-examination of the role played in Roman law and society by the institution which is the subject of this paper:

Tab. Herc. LXXXIII:

L. V[e]nidius En[ny]chus testand[i ca]usa dixs[i]t

[L.] An[n]io Rufo se honoris ius emerere [ut]

si vellet ex numero decurionum aut au[gus]-

talium nominatis a se decem de petition[ibus]

nostris discep[t]atorem dicas ra[t]ione posc[

[…]e H[S] M[‐]me sibi debere s[t]i[puletur] …

LXXXIV:

…] quem et superius nom[i]-

n[a]s[ti…] Fes[ti]nium Proculum

disc[e]ptatorem paratus sum ire,

si minus necessario c[oa]ctus a te spo(n)-

sionem tecum faciam. VAC.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 66 , November 1976 , pp. 132 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © John Crook 1976. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Tabulae Herculanenses, nos. LXXXIII and LXXXIV, published by Arangio-Ruiz, V. and Carratelli, G. Pugliese in La Parola del Passato X (1955) 460–6Google Scholar, with fundamental discussion that in part anticipates the present paper. Of much importance also is the article of Arangio-Ruiz, ‘Lo status di L. Venidio Ennico ercolanese’, Droits de l'antiquité et sociologie juridique, Mélanges Henri Lévy-Bruhl (1959), 9–24 (esp. 10–12).

2 e.g. Bekker, E. I., Die Aktionen des römischen Privatrechts 1 (1871)Google Scholar, ch. 13, ‘Die Streitsponsionen’; Jobbé-Duval, E., Études sur l'histoire de la procédure civile chez les romains 1Google Scholar; La procédure par le pari (1896), esp. 44–6.

3 Greenidge, A. H. J., The Legal Procedure of Cicero's Time (1901), 54Google Scholar: ‘its employment was strictly extra-judicial’; Roby, H. J., Roman Private Law II (1902), 375Google Scholar: ‘not strictly judicial’.

4 Dr. A. W. Lintott has, however, considered the relationship of sponsione provocare to the procedure of the earliest statutes de repetundis in a paper of which he kindly allowed me to see the draft. I am thus indebted to him for some references, acknowledged below.

5 Valerius Maximus II, 8, 2.

6 Livy XXXIX, 43, 5.

7 Fronto, ad Anton. 1, 2, 11 (van den Hout, 92–3). It is this and the following reference that I owe to Dr. Lintott.

8 Val. Max. III, 7, 7.

9 Livy XL, 46, 14.

10 Plutarch, Ti. Gr. 14, 5.

11 Cicero, de off. III, 77; Val. Max. VII, 2, 4.

12 Aulus Gellius, NA XIV 2, 21 ff. and 26.

13 Cic., II Verr. III, 132 ff.

14 id., II Verr. V, 140 ff.

15 id., in Pis. 55. Nisbet, ad loc., thinks Piso's challenge was a joke; but Piso had a house near the porta Caelimontana, and Cicero's implication may have been that he slipped home on the sly.

16 Pliny, NH IX, 119 ff.; Macrobius, Sat. III, 17, 15 ff.

17 The grandis sponsio of ad Her. IV, 23, 33 may not be of the type here discussed.

18 Val. Max. VI, 1, 10.

19 Livy III, 24, 5–6 and 56, 4.

20 Ogilvie is massively sceptical about the historicity of the second case, though not of the first: see his Commentary, 437 (note on 24, 3) and 503–4.

21 Wilkins in his edition, ad loc.

22 The rhetorical questions of Scipio Africanus to Ti. Asellus in Gellius, NA VI, 11, 9 are purely hypothetical.

23 So Arangio-Ruiz and Carratelli, op. cit. (n. 1), 462 and Arangio-Ruiz, op. cit (n. 1), 11.

24 Simply one more demonstration, perhaps, of the falsity of Livy's tale?

25 So Arangio-Ruiz: ‘ove ciò non facesse’, ‘ove non fosse comparso’.

26 Arangio-Ruiz and Carratelli, op. cit. (n. 1), 462.

27 The law did, however, impose certain regulations on the arbitrium ex compromisso, such as that an arbiter who accepted the task must perform it; and in the arbitrium referred to in Cicero, pro Roscio comoedo 10–12, C. Piso, the arbiter, had a formula.

28 op. cit. (n. 1), 45.

29 See, for instance, Gaius, Inst. IV, 13; 93–4; 165 ff.

30 Arangio-Ruiz and Carratelli, op. cit. (n. 1), 465; though he added that there may have been municipal rules of which we are ignorant, applying sanctions to one who blocked the candidature of a man who could prove his eligibility.

31 Jobbé-Duval, op. cit. (n. 2), 44.

32 Kaser, M., Das römische Privatrecht I (1955), 520Google Scholar.

33 M cf. Cic., de orat. II, 217 ff.

34 M. Kaser, op. cit., 520–1; Watson, A., The Law of Obligations in the Later Roman Republic (1965), 248 ff.Google Scholar; Birks, P., ‘The early history of iniuria’, in Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis XXXVII (1969), 163 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R.E. Smith in CQ XLV (1951), 169 ff.; Jocelyn, H D. in Antichthon III (1969), 32 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bauman, R. A., The Crimen Maiestatis in the Roman Republic and Augustan Principate (1970), 246 ff.Google Scholar, and Impietas in Principem (1974), 25 ff.

35 ad Her. 11, 13, 19 (cf. 1, 14, 24). Prof. Daube holds that even these cases were based on convicium, public abuse, a different ground from ‘straight’ defamation: Atti del congresso … Verona 1948 III, 413 ff., at p. 435. (See also n. 43 below.)

36 Macrob., Sat. III, 13, 5; that, says Cicero in pro Cael. 19 and 20, is what those eminent people should have done who alleged that they and their wives had been assaulted and accosted by Caelius.

37 See Crook, J. A., Law and Life of Rome (1967), 251–5Google Scholar.

38 Seneca, controv. X, 1 (30); Latro is at § 8.

39 See e.g. 47. 10. 1. 1 and 47. 10. 13. 4.

40 e.g. Cod. just. 9. 35. 5 and 9. 35. 3; Dig. 47. 10. 40.

41 Cic., ad Att. XVI, 15, 2.

42 ibid. II, 19, 3; Gellius, NA VII, 8, 5–6. See also Friedländer, , Sittengeschichte Roms II 10, 117Google Scholar, and Jocelyn, op. cit. (n. 34.). The freedoms did not always go unpunished.

43 Labeo's insistence (quoted at Dig. 47. 10. 1. 1) that iniuria can be committed verbis as well as re appears to have precursors in Cic., de re pub. IV, 12 and yet earlier in ad Her. IV, 25, 35. Pace Daube I think these passages are talking about ordinary verbal defamation and not about convicium in some narrower sense: see the definition in Cicero, pro Cael. 6. But certitude is not to be had.

44 Cic., Phil. 1, 27: ‘ego si quid in vitam eius aut in mores cum contumelia dixero, quominus mihi inimicissimus sit non recusabo’.

45 Cic., pro Cael. 21: ‘laesi dolent, irati efferuntur, pugnant lacessiti’. Not, however, with the duel: the Romans were, domi, a very civilian people. Gentlemen carried no weapons.

46 Leonhard devoted his Rektoratsrede (1902) to Der Schutz der Ehre im alten Rom, but he had nothing to say about sponsione provocare, only about iniuria.

47 On a flaw in Daube's treatment of this passage see CR NS XXV (1975), 67–8.

48 The thesis of Arangio-Ruiz' article in Mélanges (n. 1 above).

49 cf. Lepore, E. in Parola del Passato X (1955), 437Google Scholar.