IV. Nascitur ex contumelia: What did contumelia in the actio iniuriarum really mean?

Abstract

Summary Contumelia, which for the jurists was the definition of the delict iniuria, has been poorly understood by most modern scholarship. The term does not mean ‘contempt’ or any other attitude of the mind; instead, examination of all instances of the word contumelia predating 300 CE demonstrates that, in both lay and legal literature, it meant a kind of degradation or insult which, when judged against Roman rubrics of status and hierarchy, derogated from the honour of a free citizen. In juristic writings on iniuria, contumelia had an objective function, describing the typical fact-patterns proscribed by the praetorian edicts and rationalising those edicts’ piecemeal approach under one convenient lay concept. Contumelia was not iniuria’s mental requirement and, since it did not mean contempt, the delict was simply uninterested in whether a defendant had demonstrated a contemptuous or belittling attitude towards his victim.