Barbagallo, Corrado
"Una misura eccezionale dei Romani, Il senatus-consultum ultimum (studio di storia e di diritto pubblico romano)" by Corrado Barbagallo is a historical-legal study written in the early 20th century. It investigates the senatus consultum ultimum as Rome’s emergency safeguard, cataloging its cases, reconstructing the legal framework that enabled it, and explaining its political function amid struggles between populares and optimates. The work analyzes procedures, formulas, and effects (including hostis publicus, tumultus, iustitium, intercessio, and provocatio) and argues how and why this extraordinary measure arose, endured, and ended with the imperial order. The opening of the study sets out three aims—narrate every instance of the decree, rebuild the constitutional conditions that allowed it, and interpret its nature—while declaring a clear methodological stance that favors sociological (materialist) explanation over mere annalistic narrative. It then defines the senatus consultum ultimum as an exceptional delegation of power to consuls and others and re-examines the earliest purported cases (one amid a war with the Aequi, the other in the agitation around M. Manlius Capitolinus), embedding them in the harsh debt regime and plebeian distress, and weighing doubts about their historicity. Next, it sketches the later, better-attested uses tied to social and political crises: the Gracchan reforms and their repression, the violence around Saturninus and Glaucia, the Catilinarian…
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