Un responso nel 123 a.C. del collegio pontificale presieduto da Publio Mucio (Cic. dom. 136)

The purpose of the essay is to thoroughly inquire into the legal topics related to Licinia’s case, which took place in 123 b. C. Known thanks to Cicero’s de domo sua, it is here stated that the 63 b. C. consul gained knowledge of Licinia’s precedent from the so called annales pontificii or maximi, in 80 books (the literary collection of pontifical materials digested from 130 to 120 by the pontifex maximus Publius Mucius), rather than from the Senate’s decree issued on the matter or from the case files by the praetor in charge of it. A response, rather than a decree, was issued by the religious committee (the pontifices) on Licinia’s case. Its content was related with civil/public law rather than with pontifical law. Indeed, it dealt with the interpretation of the lex Papiria de dedicationibus. This statute is here identified with the 304 b. C. one, whose Livy talked about, with some inconsistencies due to his source (Piso’s annals, widespread some year before the annales maximi). The lex Papiria ruled that each dedication of immovable goods ought to be authorized by the plebs (after 287 alternatively by the centuriae), no matter who was the dedicator, even a magistrate, no matter if provided with imperium. Thus, the dedication of a shrine and an altar made by Licinia, vestal priestess, was ruled as ineffective. Rather than a plain application of the statute or a ruling related to the need of the popular authorization to change res publicae (the public street on the Aventine in which the altar was built) into res sacrae, the ruling must be linked with a possible exception to the general rule. Had or hadn’t the priestess Licinia knowledge of the Papirian statute, she must have had no doubts that only the vestal priestesses were entitled to dedicate a shrine to the bona dea (as it was the case), a goddess whom ought to be worshipped strictly only by women. Thus, Licinia should have deemed unconceivable that a male assembly, as the tribes or the centuriae one, could have played a role in the cult. On the contrary, the pontifices ruled that the Papirian statute should have been applied, thus standing for the precedence of the civil rules over possible religious exceptions. Furthermore, a comparison is here led forward with the other two applications of the Papirian statute made by the pontifices in 154 and 57 b. C., once again known through Cicero. In the most recent case as to regards the validity of the dedication to the liberty goddess of a part of the area in which Cicero’s mansion was built, razed to the ground in application of the lex Clodia de exilio Ciceronis.