Maiestas
in Roman criminal law, meant the inviolable dignity or sovereignty of the State; and all
conduct derogatory to the dignity or power of the people, or of those to whom the people had
intrusted power, was
crimen imminutae maiestatis (
De
Invent. ii. 17, 53). This particular conception of treason appeared late in the
history of the Republic, and was at first supplementary to the older conception of
perduellio. An attack upon the existence of the State was
perduellio; anything less than this was the crime of impaired majesty. The Republican
laws
de maiestate were all passed in a period of bitter, and often
bloody, political strife, and all the prosecutions under these laws were essentially partisan.
The expression
imminuta maiestas seems first to have been used in the
lex Apuleia (B.C. 103?); and the principal object of this law, apparently, was
to protect the sovereignty of the people as incorporated in the tribunate. The conception was
further developed by a
lex Varia (B.C. 90?) and (in the conservative interest)
by a
lex Cornelia of Sulla (B.C. 80), until the crime against majesty
practically covered and included
perduellio. In a
lex
Iulia (ascribed by some authorities to Julius Caesar, by others to Augustus, while
others again hold that there were two
leges Iuliae de maiestate), the two
crimes were fused, and
perduellio thenceforward meant simply a grave case
of lese-majesty (cf.
Inst. 3, 1, 5;
Dig. 48, 4, 11; Codex, 9, 50, 2). This
lex
Iulia remained the basis of the law of treason through the Imperial period, but the
number of possible offences against majesty was greatly increased by succeeding statutes. The
maiestas publica was primarily and chiefly embodied in the person of the
emperor (
maiestas principatus, augusta); and the
crimen
laesae maiestatis included not only acts injurious to the State, but all plots against
the emperor and his family, and all acts derogatory to his dignity and honour. Thus libels
upon the emperor, destruction of his statues, false or violated oaths
per
genium principis, and, under some of the more tyrannic rulers, hostile and even
disrespectful speech were punished as lesemajesty. Arcadius, who repealed all laws of the
last-mentioned character, extended the law of treason to include plots against the higher
officials of the Empire (A.D. 397).
Trials for
perduellio, under the Republic, were always
in comitiis—i. e. prosecution took the form of a bill, and the decision lay
with the popular assembly. Prosecutions
de maiestate, on the other hand,
were conducted before special courts (
quaestiones). In the early Imperial
period cases of treason were tried by the Senate; later by the emperor himself or his
praefects. Accusation could be brought, even under the Republic, by slaves, infamous persons,
and others who were debarred in ordinary criminal cases; and under the emperors torture was
applied to freemen and even to persons of rank (
honorati) for the purpose
of obtaining evidence.
The penalty in the Republican period was exile, or rather outlawry (
aquae et
ignis interdictio). In the Empire it varied, according to the gravity of the offence,
the social position of the offender, and the temper of the reigning emperor, from death in
various forms (
humiliores vestiis obiiciuntur vel vivi exuruntur, honestiores
capite puniuntur, Paul, v. 29, 1) to scourging or simple
relegatio. In both periods the extreme penalty carried with it the escheat or
confiscation of the criminal's property, and, under the Empire, attainder of the blood, so
that the sons of the criminal could neither hold office nor take inheritances or legacies
(Codex, 9, 8, 5). The same results attached to condemnation when prosecution was instituted
after the death of the criminal (
damnatio memoriae). See
Zumpt,
Das Criminalrecht der röm. Republik (1868), ii. 1, 226-237,
249- 258, 376-392; and
Rein, Das Criminalrecht der Römer
(1844), 506-597.
