Abstract
From Cicero to the jurists of the Empire, this lesson explores the idea of Rome as " common homeland " and its legal and political implications. Through the treatise On Laws(De Legibus), we discover the tension between the small homeland, i.e. the city of birth, and Rome, the common homeland. For Cicero, these two dimensions complement each other : the first is affective, the second is the foundation of civic belonging, and it is to the latter that the strongest duties are attached. Imperial jurists then translated these concepts into concrete rules, notably in the case of banishment(relegatio). The analysis highlights a hierarchy of " patries " and a vision of power centered on the emperor as " père de la patrie "(pater patriae). Through a series of metaphors, we come to conceive of political society as a family and the prince as a father, whose power over his " children " tends towards the absolute : a particularly dangerous metaphor, therefore, under its appearance of appealing to affectivity.
