Roman Jurists and the Empire: History and Interpretation

This essay – after pointing out that the juridical lexicon of the Roman rule, and, consequently, the political thought of jurists looked so integrated in the institutional mechanisms of the civitas to steadily reflect its presence – ana lyzes some uses of fictio in the construction of the Empire. It has set this prelimi nary question: in jurists’ point of view did the Empire incorporate the civitas? Or, in other words, was it now a territorial state? The lawyers, in fact, have never transcended the institutions of the civitas. Despite the numerous traces of the le gal reflections on the territorial dimension of the Empire, the fictio iuris, hidden behind the expression Roma communis patria, allowed them to perpetuate for several centuries, in key areas of public law, the political fiction of the civitas. It is an elaboration of crucial importance, without which some of the most important institutional changes of Late Antiquity could not be legally justified.