The Rule of Law under the High-empire, a contribution to the study of the relationship between the Law and the Prince

The restoration of the Republic led by Octavian marked a new start of legislative activity, said to be "flourishing" by Ovid (Met.,2.141), "under the leadership of the righteous" Augustus (Met.,2.141). As part of his funeral honours, Augustus being so closely related to his legislative work was made clear when it was suggested that the name of each law were to be inscribed on the banners for the funeral procession. The lex accompanied Augustus to his tomb. Little by little his successors no longer resorted to the lex and a few decades after Augustus decease, the unique function of the law was to acknowledge the powers and honours decided by the Senate and conferred to the Emperor at the beginning of his reign. That law was the last formal expression of the will of the populus Romanus: because it originated from the people and established the basis between the Prince and his status, his power and the activities that rose from it, it particularly caught the attention of the Prudentes. Though they may have noted the general disruption of the sources of the Law, resulting from the normative interventions of the emperor, it was only the part of jurisprudence that the prince had associated with his justice and therefore the production of norms,, that enhanced the normativity of the forms expressing the imperial will. The identity of the imperial constitution formed on the lex was the beginning of a new legal order, coherently based upon the consensus between the emperor and the Prudentes rather than upon the various organs of the Republic. Their resorting to the authority of the Law to characterize the imperial constitutions and their ability to assess change, ensured that an activity that started at the beginning of the civitas could continue.