The Death Penalty, the “Marriage Penalty” and Some Remarks on the Utility of Senecan Research in the Study of Roman Law

The problem in the 5th controversia from the work of Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Elder, entitled Oratorum et rhetorum sententiae divisiones colores, is presented as follows: one man seduced two women during the same night. According to the law, which in the literature is referred to as lex raptarum, a woman who was kidnapped may choose between the death penalty for the ravisher or marrying him, but without giving him a dowry. Here, two women were granted the right of option and one of them demanded the death of the man, but the other wanted to marry him. The declaimers were trying to find an answer to the question: which solution is worthier to prevail? Since, in fact, the main problem raised in the controversia is the interpretation of law, it constituted quite a significant intellectual challenge. The declaimers employed very impressive legal reasoning techniques. This controversia constitutes then not only an interesting starting point to conduct the research on the borderline of law and declamation, but also might be a strong argument that the law and rhetoric, at least in some aspects, could have been complementary to each other.