Quando i giuristi diventarono ‘veteres’. Augusto e Sabino, i tempi del potere e i tempi della giurisprudenza

There is a widespread belief that the Roman jurists were not interested in history. However, the writings of the jurists clearly show that at a certain moment they began to distinguish between veteres and jurists of the present. The study analyses the juristic concept of veteres in various steps. The first step is to determine whether veteres was a vague and flexible category, or wether (as will in fact turn out) the qualification carried a very specific meaning, i. e. drawing a demarcation line within the history of the discipline. In the second place, this paper explores the factors that determined such a demarcation. Finally, this study connects the specific distinction found among the jurists to political history and above all to broader cultural and ideological phenomena. All the ancient testimonia in contextsallows us to identify a precise demarcation line between past and present, a genuine terminus antiquitatis: those considered veteres are the jurists prior to Masurius Sabinus (midfirst century ad). This caesura is the result of many historical developments that were experienced as change: in Roman law; in the relation between jurists and political power (with the new centrality of the princeps); in the sources of law (with the more extensive use of legislation), and at the same time in the organization of legal teaching and in the perception that the protagonists themselves had of the distance that separated them from institutions that were by now antiquated