Pliny's lawsuits in the centumviral and senatorial courts (I-II century a.D)

• Grant number: 12/05660-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: October 01, 2012
• End date: December 31, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Principal Investigator: Margarida Maria de Carvalho
• Grantee: Dominique Monge Rodrigues de Souza
• Supervisor: Christina Kuhn
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Oxford, England
• Associated to the scholarship: 11/01944-7 - Lawsuits by Pliny the Younger in the centumviral court and in the senatorial court (I-II century A.D.), BP.MS

Abstract

The main goal of our inquiring paper, in Masters level, is to analyze the performances of Pliny the Younger in the legal field, emphasizing his performances in the Centumviral Court and in the Senate Court, aiming to understand better the development of his political career. Our main hypothesis is that there was a complementarity between the legal career and the cursus honorum of this Roman senator, because, even after going to the Senate in 90 A.D., Pliny the Younger goes on acting both in the Centumviral Court and in the Senate Court, as well as he starts giving legal advice, especially on wills and inheritance. This hypothesis was drawn from the reflections coming from our Undergraduate Research, funded by FAPESP (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo), in which we undertook a study on political-administrative functions with emphasis on legal function of the Roman Senate during the Principate with documental reference to epistles of Pliny the Younger. In this sense, our research on Masters has, as a documental reference, 64 (sixty-four) epistles of Pliny the Younger, which refer to the legal career from this Roman senator. Beyond the Plinian epistolary work, his speech "Panegyricus" makes part of our documental corpus, because based on the analysis of this speech, we will be able to analyze the philosophical influences from the writer, which is vital relevance to a more lively interpretation of the epistolary corpus apart from interpreting certain traces on some legal procedures. Thus, the aim of our internship at the Faculty of Classics at the University of Oxford, under the supervision of Dr Christina Kuhn, is to improve our understanding on the judiciary and political-administrative organization in the Roman Empire, especially regarding the legal courts and their respective jurisdictions. We believe that such reflections are indispensable to a useful analysis of our documentation and to the development of our main project in Masters level. (AU)