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In Roman law, the Latin adjective privatus makes a legal distinction between that which is "private" and that which is publicus, "public" in the sense of pertaining to the Roman people (populus Romanus).
Used as a substantive, the term privatus refers to a citizen who is not a public official or a member of the military.[1] Increasingly throughout the Middle and Late Republic, the privatus was nevertheless sometimes granted imperium during a crisis; the definition of crisis was elastic, and the amassing of power by unelected individuals (privati) contributed to the breakdown of the checks and balances of the republican system.[2]
- ^ Adolf Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law (American Philological Association, 1953), p. 651.
- ^ T. Corey Brennan, The Praetorship in the Roman Republic (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 154 online, 610, et passim.