De accusationibus et inscriptionibus (D.48, 2). Some remarks on crimen and accusation in Roman law

Abstract

The examination of the nature of the Roman crimina and their typology was made possible due to the testimony of the Roman jurisprudence. Claudius Saturninus distinguished between crimes based mainly on the manner of committing the crime (criminal modus operandi). Finally, however, the formal requirements for accusatio compiled by Paulus and Ulpian, helped to reconstruct the nature of the Roman public law crime. They allowed to make a conclusion about Romans perceiving the crime in accordance with the formal method of defining it, i.e. as a criminal offence, the elements of which were described by the law.