Auctoritas, potestas, libertas dicendi: una nota

This paper deals with the original concepts of potestas (of the people gathered in the assemblies and of the magistrates), auctoritas (of the senate) and libertas (of the citizens) in Republican Rome and with their evolution through the Early Empire (where libertas became freedom of speech to the emperor) and the Later Empire (where the libertas dicendi passed from the senators to the bishops: St. Ambrose was the exemplary model of this courageous attitude); at the end of this process the Gelasian doctrine separated the religious and the political sphere aiming to defend the libertas from the imperial autocracy, but doing so it paved the way to the substitution of the mixture of powers of ancient Rome with the separation of powers of modern times.