perduellio

• Hostile conduct against one's country, treason, whether consisting of an attempt against the state, its institutions, and chief ruler, or of union with a foreign enemy, desertion, etc. (class.): qui perduellionis reus est, hostili animo adversus rempublicam vel principem animatus est, Dig. 48, 4, 11; Cic. Pis. 2, 4: (Clodius) actionem perduellionis intenderat (for causing the execution of the Catilinarians who were Roman citizens), id. Mil. 14, 36: perduellionis judicium, id. Rab. Perd. 3, 10: tum Sempronius, perduellionis se judicare Cn. Fulvio dixit, that he accused Fulvius of high-treason (for allowing himself to be defeated), Liv. 26, 3: duumviros, qui Horatio perduellionem judicent, secundum legem facio (for killing his sister, which was regarded as a usurpation of the prerogative of punishment, and hence as a crime against the state), Liv. 1, 26: diem perduellionis alicui dicere, Suet. Caes. 12; cf. Liv. 43, 16; Val. Max. 6, 5, 3.—*
• II Transf., concr., a (foreign) enemy of one's country, a public enemy; for the usual hostis (censured as a bombastic expression), Auct. Her. 4, 10, 15; cf. Amm.21, 16, 10.

• perduellis, open hostility, hostility to one's country, high-treason: perduellionis reus: perduellionis se iudicare Cn. Fulvio dixit, declared Fulvius guilty of high-treason, L.: tibi perduellionem iudico, L.

PERDUELLIO[MAJESTASp. 114.]

The Roman term for all acts whereby an individual within the State showed himself an enemy (perduellis) of the established constitution. It included attempts at despotic power, usurpation or abuse of magisterial powers (e. g. the execution of a citizen), violation of the sanctity of the tribuni plebis, etc. In the time of the kings, the king himself tried crimes of the kind, or handed over the decision to two deputies appointed in each instance by himself, duoviri capitales or perduellionis, from whom an appeal lay to the people; after Servius Tullius, to the Comitia Centuriata. Under the Republic, duoviri were still appointed as presiding judges, till this gradually fell into disuse, and trials of the kind came in general to be dealt with by the popular court. In earlier times the penalty was death by hanging on a tree, by throwing from the Tarpeian Rock, or by beheading; later, banishment, and after the tribunes brought cases of perduellio before the Comitia Tributa, fines as well. From the latter half of the second century B.C. the less important cases began to be treated as offences of maiestas; and by Caesar's Julian law, B.C. 46, all cases of perduellio were included under this name. See maiestas, p. 999.