Alle radici della corruzione

Limits and rules against corruption and towards those who exercise the government have their genesis in the Roman constitutional experience, together with citizens’ rights and duties. This is demonstrated by some examples of the splitting of the supreme powers and the temporal delimitation of them, the prohibition on the accumulation and replication of magistrate offices and the intervals between them. Institutional weaknesses were however present and it is verified that the phenomenon of corruption followed the res publica, above all in connection with the elections of the magistrates in the republican phase, during which recurrent laws are attested. The sources on corruption decrease only starting from the prin-cipality, in a significant way, to increase from the lower empire.