Considerazioni sul definire nella giurisprudenza anteriore a Quinto Mucio

This paper examines the definitions in jurisprudence prior to Quinto Mucio, with references to the relationships between concreteness and abstraction, between rhetoric and jurisprudence, and between the latter and grammar. However, the meager results of the research – a couple of definitiones in about three centuries of scientia iuris activity, both of which have come down to us outside of Justinian’s compilation (namely those of nexum, formulated by Manilius and transcribed by Varro, in De lingua Latina 7.5.105, and ambitus aedium, attributed by Cicero to Publius Mucius Scaevola: Top. 4.24) – does not automatically correspond to total abstraction: we are certain that even the pontifices were perfectly capable not of abstracting, but of conceiving interpretative rules that denote the ability to construct a specific reality of law. The (few) cross-referenced definitions, prior to the drafting of the commentaries ad edictum, are indicative of a genuine functional link between their elaboration and the construction of a specialized lexicon.