Preamble

The title of this chapter is not misconceived. The introduction of one-man rule by Augustus in 27 BC was a watershed in the perception of human rights, as in so much else. As the Roman hegemony began being transformed into the Roman empire under the realisation that Rome was no longer a small city-state on the Italian mainland but a global village, so old ideas were infused with new vitality and old lamps were exchanged for new.

In some areas, however, progress in humanitas was blunted by relapses into inconsistency, Clementia, for example, moved beyond its modest Republican dimensions, evolving into both a cardinal virtue of the emperor and a fully-fledged canon of criminal interpretation. The change flowed from the increasing personification of the Great Man as the fountainhead of human rights. But dementia’s more lenient approach to crime and punishment was offset by punitive differentials. Punishments were made in a way that was either humane or inhumane, depending on the status of the wrongdoer, and society seemed indifferent to the standards of humanitas that had motivated Cicero’s fulminations against barbaric methods of execution. But such was the ambivalence of the time that one major feature of human rights was pursued more vigorously than ever before. Ill-treatment— still focussed primarily on non-Romans—was suppressed more effectively than it had been in the Republic.

To some extent humanitas now played a lesser part in the practical enforcement of human rights than its offshoot, clementia; it did not have the same direct impact on people’s daily lives. Though not entirely lacking a counterpart to dementia’s, special credential as a virtue of the emperor,¹ humanitas is not prominent in this respect.

The diversity of categories and material obliges us to make a choice. Some categories are omitted completely. Six topics will be covered, the first two in this chapter and the others in the next. They are: humanitas and clementia; Clementia Caesaris; curbs on rapacity; universalism; freedom of speech; social welfare.³ The first of these covers uses of the two words within the general ambit of human rights, taking clementia in its general sense of an offshoot of humanitas. The second topic inspects dementia’s, special role as a virtue of the emperor. The third pursues the protection of non-Romans under the Republican repetundae statutes, plus one imperial enactment. The fourth examines the expansion of universalism under the influence of the Pax Romanad The fifth and sixth topics respectively cover freedom of speech and social welfare.

The chosen topics all reflect positive aspects of human rights. But there is also a negative aspect, a darker side that exemplifies inhumanitas rather than humanitas. Some of the examples will be incorporated in our six topics, but others will be grouped under a special rubric in chapter 9.