Abstract
The question of where the present begins and where it separates from the past was very pressing in the Augustan era, divided between tradition and innovation, and arose in all fields - poetry (Hor., Ep. ad Augustum, 2, 1), rhetoric (Tac., Dial., 19), techniques (Plin., N.H., 14, 2-6), but also with regard to law. A distinction was made between veteres and recent jurists. But establishing who these veteres were, these " Anciens ", poses a problem of interpretation. Depending on the nature of the text and the context, the meaning of veteres can vary. In their writings, jurists refer 48 times by this word to their predecessors, among whom 11 jurists are mentioned by name. This presupposes that the authors were able to distinguish between those who belonged to the veteres and those who did not : they constituted a specific group of jurists. In particular, Gaius(Inst., 1, 188) reports on a controversy that had divided the veteres ; on this occasion, he quotes Q. Mucius Scaevola (consul in 95 BC), Ser. Sulpicius Rufus (consul in 51 BC) and M. Antistius Labeo (contemporary of Augustus) as belonging to this group. If Labeo was thus the last of the veteres, the first of the contemporaries was Masurius Sabinus, who had his floruit under Tiberius and Nero. This is confirmed in particular by Ulpian(D., 12, 5, 6) and Paul (Fr. Vat. 1). Sabinus is therefore the terminus antiquitatis, the end of antiquity and the beginning of the present in Roman jurisprudence. Of modest origins, he was a paid lecturer, a departure from the profile of previous jurists. His major work, the tres libri iuris civilis, became the jurisprudential text par excellence, and was extensively commented on by the jurists of the 2nd and 3rd centuries (Pomponius, Paul and Ulpian). His opinions formed a kind of canon. Finally, it was during his time that the polarization into two " schools "(scholae) began, with Sabinus and Cassius as the leaders of one school, and Nerva the Father and Proculus as the other. The Augustan era provided a favorable context for this break. The emperor conferred the power to give answers to the public(publice respondendi ius) on a few jurists : law thus entered the sphere patronized by the prince, like the arts ; it was even at his feet, as shown by the image of theaureus of 28, evoked in lecture 7. Sabinus, although he doesn't seem to have explicitly claimed it, was aware of this turning point, as shown by his use of the termsantiquus/ antiquitas to define the relationship between the present and certain institutions that he felt were bygone (Ulp., D., 9, 2, 27, 21 ; Aulu-Gelle, 5, 19, 11, where he defines theadrogatio of the slave as an old-fashioned thing because it no longer corresponded to Augustan legislation).
