Brevi considerazioni in tema di 'servitus poenae'

Brevi considerazioni in tema di ‘servitus poenae’ Tommaso Beggio Abstract͸These pages take their point of departure from the monograph by Aglaia McClintock, Servi della pena. Condannati a morte nella Roma imperiale (2010), which is the most recent study of the so-called servitus poenae, an institution of the criminal law from the early Empire. The book is important because it offers a comprehensive description of the legal issues surrounding this type of slavery and also because it is the only work that has been published on this theme in the more than forty years following the fundamental study by Ugo Zilletti. In the first chapter of her monograph, McClintock sets out to explain the particular condition of the servus poenae, while also inquiring into the origins of the in-stitution and the etymology of the term servitus poenae. In the second chapter she deals with the implications of the sentence that produces this condition and, in the third, the chances of a return to freedom for the slave, following imperial approval, as well as the evolution of the institution up to the conception of servitus poenalis adopted by the Fa-thers of the Church. Though her analysis of the etymology of the term has considerable interest, I disagree with McClintock's argument that all forms of punishment under the ser-vitus poenae imply the death of the person convicted. The main issue was instead the status permutatio that followed condemnation to some penalties that were very harsh in nature. I make this point first through a brief review of past approaches to this institution in the scholarship, where that of Zilletti ranks foremost, and second by taking into consid-eration an inscription dating to the joint reign of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus dealing with the so-called aes Italicense, a document which is not analyzed by McClintock. It turns out that this text offers some important information about the servitus poenae in general and the damnati ad gladium in particular.