La lex iulia de pecuniis repetundis nell’interpretazione dei giuristi del principato

In the fragments of the works of the jurists of the Antonine and Severian ages we find the memory of the lex Iulia de pecunis repetundis that was proposed by Caesar and approved in 59 BC. Several changes were made to Caesar’s legislation during the time of the principate, as we learn from the jurists’ fragments that have been handed down to us. Through their interpretative work, first of all, the number of subjects abstractly incriminable was enlarged; this was also accompanied by the birth of a new criminal figure: the intervention of an extortion act, in particular through the use of threats or the induction of a state of fear in the victim, came to determine, in relation to at least some cases, the shift of illicit conduct from the sphere of the crimen repetundarum to that of the extraordinary crime of concussio, as the reflections of the jurist Macro well demonstrate. Even the prohibition of donatives, referred to in some of the passages examined in this contribution, has had to undergo extensive interpretations. Other information concerning the discipline dictated by the lex Iulia and its later extensions also comes from some passages of the Pauli Sententiae, known mainly through the Leiden Fragmentum (B.P.L. 2589). The author focuses on each of them of them, while with regard to the offender’s condemnation of the restitution of the sum unlawfully paid, the investigation finally comes to offer a new reconstructive hypothesis of the lacunose Fr. Leid. 7.