Roman Declamation, Roman Law, and Ancient Legal Medicine: the Case of veneficium

Abstract This paper discusses the Roman legal treatment of poisoning, grounded on the lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficis (81 BCE), through the lens of school forensic declamations (controversiae). Sections 1-4 set the context and address key methodological issues. Section 5, the core of the research, examines Pseudo-Quintilian’s Declamatio minor 350 Aqua frigida privigno data (Cold water given to stepson) – a fictitious legal case concerning a suspicious death caused by drinking cold water. It is argued that the medico-legal assumptions underlying this distinctly unique case are likely to have brought new content to the legal conceptualisation of the reckless administration of venena, and hence, to the juristic interpretation of the degree of criminal intent required in similar cases of suspected homicide. The overall objective is to provide new insights of multidisciplinary relevance into the intersections of Roman Imperial forensic rhetoric, Roman law, and Graeco-Roman medicine, by looking closer at the method of argument through which trials involving a charge of poisoning may have been conducted in actual court practice.