L'attribuzione della qualifica 'vir bonus' nella prassi giudiziaria d'età repubblicana (a proposito di Cato, or. frg. 186 Sbelnd. = 206 Malc.)

Abstract

The qualification ‘vir bonus’, involved by an ancient judicial rule and by a sponsio (linked to this rule) containing the clause ‘ni vir melior esset’, which are both attested in a fragment of Cato the censor, expresses a positive assessment from a moral point of view and not from a social point of view, as is shown by all the sources we have for the III-II century BC. The emergence and the diffusion just in this period of a figure of vir bonus caracterised in a moral sense is probably due to a political and economic transformation of the Roman society.