The concept of servus poenae in Roman law and its reception in the early modern period

The paper addresses the reception of the terminology of ‘penal servitude’ in the modern age, with special reference to Britain and America. Penal slavery / servitude derives from servus poenae, a technical term devised during the II century CE for those condemned for a capital crime, which carried loss of freedom and civic rights, but not necessarily immediate execution. The Romans created a new category of degradation for human beings, that paved the way for the introduction of novel forms of detention and exploitation of felons. There is a gap in scholarship regarding the reception of this ancient institution in the modern age. Instead of being lost in the oblivion of time, direct and indirect citations of and references to the concept and institution of penal servitude resurface in thinkers of the early modern age and the age of revolution who focus on capital punishment and its relations with sovereignty. The history of penal servitude intertwines with that of slavery in America and Britain and with the movements for its abolition in a particularly interesting way. Very approximately one could say that there is a link between the reduction in the use of the death penalty and the decline of (or the imminent abolition of) slavery, on the one hand, and the emergence or re-emergence of penal slavery on the other, as an acceptable and ‘just’ capital punishment.