Note sulla prescrizione dei crimini nell'ordinamento giuridico romano

Contrary to traditional opinion, it seems possible to state that, at least starting from the age of the emperor Augustus, there has been a clear tendency in the legislation to limit the liability of the criminals, due to the passage of the time from the commission of the crime. The thesis, now dated, according to which the twenty-year prescription would have established itself as the ordinary hypothesis only under Justinian, no longer seems acceptable: from the rules established in 284 A.D. by C. 9, 22, 12, indeed ( once the field has been cleared of any residual suspicion of interpolation), it is clear that the phenomenon of prescription, already known long before the end of the third century A.D., received under the emperor Diocletian a new regulation which, very probably, consisted in extending its effects to all crimes, however increasing the relative term to twenty years which thus became general, with just few well-defined exceptions: on the one hand, some cases of shorter prescription (generally five years, according to the older legislation) and, on the other, some hypotheses of imprescriptibility (parricidium, crimen suppositi partus and apostasy ), justified on the basis of the seriousness of the committed crimes.