LA VILLA DEI MVCII SULL’ANIENE E L’INVENZIONE DELLA FORMULA DI MUCIO SCEVOLA NEL PROCESSO CIVILE ROMANO: DIBATTITO E PROGRESSI A TRE ANNI DALLA SCOPERTA

Abstract

The excavation of the villa in the ‘Salone’ area is examined to recognize the the owners who commissioned the three main construction
phases (around 150 - 40 BC). We then proceed with the analysis of the memorandum sumptuarium painted on a wall and ascertain its chronology
as of January 16, 40 BC, which also dates the frescoes with the formula of Mucio Scevola and the building extension of the villa. The date painted
a(nte) d(iem) XVII K(alendas) Febru(arias) belongs to the Julian Calendar introduced by Caesar in 45 BC. and the year 40 BC can be determined
on the basis of the nundinal cycle of 41-40 BC. thanks to the attestation of historical sources. The identification of the jurist Q. Mucius
Scaeuola, to whom the villa on the Aniene river belonged, in ancient sources has led to a critical debate in the modern era: since the humanistic
age the alternative has been posed between the Augur (†88 BC) and the Pontifex Maximus (†82 BC). We therefore proceed to the evaluation of
the testimonies in Cicero, Columella, Pliny the Elder and Athenaeus and the interpretative paths from the 16th to the 21st century are examined
to recognize the Augur or the Pontifex Maximus. Thus Sebastiano Corradi (1552), Franciscus Fabricius (1554), Friedrich Marx (1894), Enrica
Malcovati (1965) and Ernst Badian (1967), and finally Jean-Louis Ferrary (1988, 2018) and Marc Mayer i Olivé (2021) are taken into consideration.
We come to the conclusion that the Augur lived in a large domus in the urban center of Rome, while the Pontifex Maximus had a small suburban
villa in the country side and was famous for having built it too small for his Catonian thrift and stoic frugality in the canteen, which led
him to be one of only three Romans who respected the lex Fannia on the limits of luxury at the table. This information coincides with the building
characteristics of the Villa del Giurista on the Aniene and with what is written on the memorandum sumptuarium represented in a fresco: it is
therefore concluded that the villa belonged to Q. Mucius Sceuola Pontifex Maximus. At this point the question arises whether the owner of the 

villa in 40 BC. was the eldest son or the son of the son: the celebratory message of the moral and jurisprudential tradition of the Mucii Scaeuolae
in the frescoes reveals, however, the Weltanschauung in the Caesarian age. The message represents the Catonian frugality combined with the
hospitalitas of the villa in the tradition of the mores maiorum, but also attributes to a Mucius Sceuola the invention of the category of formulae
with certain intentio at a time characterized by different elements of archaicity: the language and the handwriting of the “Mucius Scevola’s formula”,
the morphology of the waxed tablet for a judicial praetorian edictum, which evokes a reality prior to the lex Cornelia de iurisdictione of
67 BC, finally the use of the genitive of the auctor (Formula Mucci Scaeulae) instead of the more modern additive use (Formula Muciana), as
demonstrated by M.P. Pavese. The new procedural document, which does not represent a formula-iudicium or a specific formula of the Praetorian
Edict, but evokes an entire category of edictal formulas, the category with intentio certa, must be placed in relation to the laws Silia, Aebutia
and Calpurnia, unfortunately of controversial chronology and raises the problem of the origin of the agere per formulas. A part of modern doctrine
has recognized in the lex Aebutia the origin of the agere per concepta uerba, with the substitution of the formular condictio to the legis actio
per condictionem. Instead, this founding ‘invention’ seems to be attributed in the waxed diptych to a Mucius Scaeuola; which raises the question
whether the pictorial representation, which reflects a widespread belief in 40 BC, reflects a historical reality – whatever the character to be
recognized among the different ones who bore that nomen and that cognomen – or is not the result of a typical ‘annalistic manipulation’ since
we know that P. Mucius Scaeuola, Pontifex Maximus († 115 BC) published the Annales Maximi of the Pontifices for the first time, falsifying
them with the introduction of legends that exalted his ancestors.