perduellio

Forms

perduelliō f (genitive perduelliōnis); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Latin perduellis (“public enemy”) + -iō.^[2][1][3] The base is made of per- and duellum, the old form of bellum (“war”),^[3][4] and de Vaan reports Meiser's view that legal language kept the ⟨du⟩ in it.^[4]

The grammarian Priscian already derived it from duellum, the ancients' word for bellum;^[3] Charisius took the prefix as an intensive, so that a perduellis was more than an enemy.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan's first author is the annalist Valerius Antias,^[4] in whose history a tribune of the plebs, Licinius, fixes a day for a man's trial for it.^[3] The TLL also cites it from the old royal law that Livy quotes, under which two judges try Horatius for it.^[3]

Semantic evolution

It was a term of Roman criminal law, the gravest hostile act of a citizen against his own state,^[2][3] such as an attack on the state, its institutions or its head, an alliance with a foreign enemy, or desertion.^[5][6] Cicero spoke for Rabirius, who was charged with it,^[3][7] and Livy reports cases from early Rome, among them a tribune's charge against Gnaeus Fulvius for losing an army through rashness.^[3][5] After Livy it appears mostly in writers who explain the institution or recount old cases.^[3] In the Digest, Ulpian says that a man accused of it acted with hostile intent against the state or the emperor.^[5][3]

By metonymy the plural could mean enemies: the Rhetorica ad Herennium quotes perduelliones as an example of bombast,^[6][7] and the glossary of Placidus explains the word as rebellions.^[6] In British Medieval Latin it is treason, as when William of Malmesbury calls Penda, king of the Mercians, a seedbed of treasons, and Alexander Neckam uses it for the long struggle between reason and the senses.^[8]

Timeline

• 1st century BC – Valerius Antias uses it of a tribune's charge of treason.^[3][9]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero defends Rabirius on this charge.^[3][7][9]
• 59 BC–17 AD – Livy reports early trials for it, among them that of Horatius.^[3][5][9]

Meanings

Noun

1. (law) high treason, a hostile act against one's own country.^[2][5][3]
2. (by metonymy, plural) Public enemies.^[6][7]
3. (Medieval Latin) A struggle, battle.^[8]

Related words

• perduellis
• duellum
• bellum

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
7. ^ a b c d Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b Latham, R. E., D. R. Howlett, R. K. Ashdowne, et al. (1975–2013), Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, London: British Academy / Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de