Bonae artes e ius. Retrospettiva e prospettiva su due giornate pluridisciplinari in ricordo dell’opera di Ferdinando Bona.

Abstract

This paper offers some concluding remarks concerning the conference “Bonae artes et ius: IX incontro di studio di storici e giuristi dell’antichità”, held at the University of Pavia on January 26 and 27, 2023. In the spirit of the conference, these remarks first touch upon multidisciplinarity and its benefits in Roman legal history, particularly for the study of Roman law from a historicizing perspective, i.e. in its ancient context. A brief biographical profile of Ferdinando Bona is then presented, and his method of placing texts and close reading at the centre of all interpretation – namely through an analysis of their structure - is emphasized. The soundness of this method is illustrated through the hypothesis put forward by Bona (in 1990) concerning the thematic (not alphabetical) ordering of Aelius Gallus' De verborum quae ad ius civile pertinent significatione. This hypothesis was confirmed by the identification in 2017, by W. Kaiser, in some manuscripts linked to the Lex Romana Visigothorum, of an extract from the work of Aelius Gallus, regarding the degrees of kinship (cognatio), which is arranged thematically. The dating of the work of Aelius Gallus to the end of the republic or the Augustan age, as accepted by Bona, also seems to receive some confirmation from this newly identified extract.