‘Proletarius iam civis’. A proposito di un’interpretazione di Bernardo Albanese di XII Tab. 1.4.

Abstract

Basing her study on Bernardo Albanese’s interpretation of the syntagm ‘proletario iam civi’ – which is uphold as the original content of XII Tab. 1.4 – the author intends to take to heart the results gained by the Scholar from Palermo, who acknowledged an early link between proletarius and prolis, and a primary meaning of prolis closely related to the idea of belonging to civitas. Hence, the author proposes to resurvey the literary and legal tradition that coupled proletarius and prolis, by considering the interpretation of the Festus’s lemma proletarium. Such interpretation is the effective evidence of a long-lasting tradition that, undeniably stemming from the decemviral precept that embodied the syntagm proletarius iam civis, joined proletarii with prolis and progenies as suitable terms for showing the legal condition which is also represented through other terms such as suboles, liberi and filii familias. Therefore, the relation between the terms proletarius and prolis would have been built because of their mutual suitability for expressing the idea of ‘belonging to a community’. In conclusion, the author proposes that Cic., leg. 3.7, where the syntagm ‘problem discribunto’ is comprised, should be attributed to such a tradition as well.