An Avant La Lettre State
Even though a number contemporary Romanists have written brilliant works on Roman public law, it is clear that the Romans were never conscious of the fact that they were laying the foundations for a new legal model of power.
They did not view the state, as we do today, as an abstract authority imposed on individuals (Genet 1990). They were markedly pragmatic and little given to abstraction. Therefore, they identified that power with something concrete: the set of persons forming Roman society.Initially, the Roman state encompassed the inhabitants of the city (civitas) of Rome, or the Populus Romanus, according to the expression enshrined in the texts, at least until late in the Empire’s history. The official documents would also cite, along with the people, the Senate of Rome, an assembly made up of the former magistrates and, in general, the city’s most eminent citizens, a fact that made it a very influential body. It is significant that in the official name of Rome the Senate preceded the people and the magistrates acted on behalf of the Senate and People of Rome (SPQR = Senatus Populusque Romanus).[104]
Even the term republic, from res publica (of the people) lacked the abstract sense it has today, referring to a model of state standing in opposition to monarchy. Originally, in Rome, the republic designated the affairs (also the patrimony) of the Populus, conceived as a group of citizens. Only after Augustus’s reforms when, paradoxically, the monarchy reappeared; the term republic began to be used at times in its modern sense, i.e. as a synonym of the state, specifically when the writers of the imperial era used the word as opposed to the sovereignty of the emperor.[105]
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