Diritto e agronomi latini: un caso in tema di actio aquae pluviae arcendae

This paper relates to the exegesis of Dig., XXXIX, 3, 24 pr.-2, taken from the fourth book of the epitome of Alfeno Varo’s digesta curated by Paul. This text describes some cases of dubious applicability of actio aquae pluviae arcendae regarding a pratum located in a locus superior, where it is assumed the creation of various works that affect different modes of water flow and thus may cause damage to the owner of the locus inferior. There is a kind of narrative crescendo in the presentation of the various artefacts, which is expressed by scanning the text in principium and paragraphs: from simple plowing and sowing sulci and porcae of the principium, you go to the far more profound and transverse sulci aquarii of § 1, up to the draining fossae in § 2. While in the principium the action is not entitled to the owner of the locus inferior, in the subsequent two paragraphs it is due. The fragment starts, in the principium, from the description of the event, continues with the request made to Servius (master of Alfeno) and ends with the answer. The description and the solution of the case examined in the principium provide the opportunity to Servius for an hypothetical presentation, according to the method of distinctio, of two other possible methods of conducting the same case, as respectively described in § § 1 and 2 of the fragment, each of which corresponds to a different solution, with the result that the response is in the complex three-sided or trilateral: the interpretative technique per distinctiones adopted by Servius thus implies that the solution of the case depends on the different modalities of the case itself. This paper aims at explaining the context of the alfenian fragment and understanding the rationes dubitandi and rationes decidendi of each individual mode of conduct of the case in the light of the agronomic Latin sources (Cato, Varro, Columella and Palladio).