The Roman notion of personhood, the persona, had a long development, ultimately culminating at the height of the classical Roman law in a sophisticated set of rules, usages and institutions that regulated everything from status in civil society to familial relationships.  For the Roman, the person and his or her function within the extended family was pivotal to the entire system of law that Rome bequeathed to the Western and to a large extent also the Middle Eastern World.  It must be remembered that the family included also slaves of the household, which (as is explained elsewhere in Slaves as things) category of persons was very important within the Roman system of not only family life, but also commerce and industry.  This node does not deal with the notion of personhood in respect of slaves.

Only people, i.e. homo sapiens were regarded as personae by Romans.  Classical Roman law never developed the idea of a company or corporation that can function in the commercial reality as an individual legal entity.  In the post classical period certain organisations or bodies were vested with rights and obligations as entities outside of the individual persona, but not in the sense we moderns understand it.¹

The persona originated at birth of the individual, and ceased to exist at death.  From the moment the child was born, it was vested with legal capacity but as discussed elsewhere in Suing for prenatal injuries, legal capacity could be conferred upon the unborn in instances where it would be to the advantage of the unborn child, on the express understanding that the child must eventually be born and live (even if only for a moment).

The status or condicio (= place, standing in society) of an individual was determined with reference to the totality of rights and capacities vested in the individual.  In other words, a Roman individual was not necessarily vested with all the rights and capacities available.  The more rights and capacities an individual had, the higher his or her status or condicio.  The most important factors that influenced status in Rome were liberty or bondage, citizen or not and family.

All persons in Rome were classified as free (liberi) or slaves (servi).  A person became a slave in various ways, the most important being by virtue of birth (from a mother in bondage) or imprisonment (usually prisoners of war, although for certain offences loss of freedom was the prescribed punishment).  In principle a slave had no capacity in the legal sense of the word, and effectively the only thing a slave was legally capable of doing, was to accumulate a peculium, being the money he received from his or her master or other persons and which his or her master allowed him or her to keep.  A slave could be freed by his or her master, in which case he or she obtained status of his or her own, but not necessarily citizenship.

In order to be born free (= ingenui, free born as opposed to freed = libertus, libertinus) for purposes of Roman law, both a child's parents had to be Roman citizens who had the ius conubii (= right to conclude a Roman marriage).  This right was not exclusive to citizens, but could under certain circumstances be obtained by foreigners (peregrini).  It was not also required that the parents be married to one another.  A child born out of wedlock to parents not married, was still free, provided the one or both parents were free citizens or if either was not a citizen, had received the ius conubii. 

Being free and a citizen gave the person the following rights in Roman law:

·        The ius suffragii or right to vote in the popular assemblies (limited to men in most instances, although in all probability women were allowed to vote on certain (limited) issues in certain assemblies).

·        The ius honorum or right to be elected to civic office (again only men).

·        The right to enter the army and serve as an officer (men only again).

·        The ius conubii or right to conclude a Roman marriage.

·        The right to litigate in the law courts.

·        The ius commercii or right to commercial activity, e.g. conclude contracts and other acts necessary to engage in trade or business.

Age also influenced personhood.  Infants (infantes) had no capacity to act, older children had limited capacity, and only after puberty (fourteen for boys and twelve for girls) did the person acquire full legal capacity.  Women were limited in their capacity, initially severely so if they were under the manus ( = hand, i.e. the power) of their husbands, but during the principate women were granted much more freedom and independence, to such extent that marriages cum manu disappeared in the post classical period.

Insanity had much the same effect on status as in our modern society, and insanes or furiosi were divested of their capacity to the degree of their affliction.

Roman citizenship or the lack thereof determined in the first instance whether, and in the second, how much, of the capacities an individual had.  In principle, a citizen had full capacity after puberty (subject to other factors, e.g. sex or class).  This is dealt with in another node.

Familial relationship was another strong factor which determined the capacity of an individual.  The head of the family was the paterfamilias, usually the eldest male who in principle wielded great power over all the members of his family (including slaves) who fell under his patriapotestas (patriarchal power).  These would usually be his wife in the case of a marriage cum manu, their children and their issue, inclusive of adopted children and also children born out of wedlock, slaves and all other persons who were in some relationship of dependence to the paterfamilias.  Effectively, everything belonged to the paterfamilias, who was vested with the ius vitae necisque, the right of life and death in respect of all his family.  This right entailed that he could kill any member of his household, or even sell any of them into slavery trans Tiberim(= across the river Tiber where the slave markets were – slaves could for religious reasons not be sold inside of the city of Rome).  Practically such drastic measures would normally only be taken after the paterfamilias had consulted his adult male family members (or consilium domesticum).

While no person under the patriapotestas could legally own his or her own assets, the sons (filiifamilias) were also allowed to accumulate a private fund, much like the peculium of a trusted slave.  In the same vein, the paterfamilias was liable for the delicts (torts) committed by his family members, although later the filiusfamilias was held personally liable.

Lastly, status was influenced by an occurrence peculiar to Roman law, called capitis deminutio, literally the lessening of the head.  Three forms were recognised, being maxima, media and minima.  Capitis deminutio maxima occurred when a Roman was deprived of his or her citizenship, which also entailed the loss of all capacities and rights citizenship brought.  This could be the result of being found guilty of treason, or some other serious crime against the state.  When a citizen lost his or her freedom (e.g. through being sold into slavery to pay a debt), it was called capitis deminutio media, while a change in family relationship was called capitis deminutio minima (e.g. adoption or marriage).

1 See Kaser, Das Römische Privatrecht, vol II (1975) 112.

A call to faith. The Salafi way of thought.

Salafi is a term used to describe fundamentalist Islamic thought. The followers of such practice imitate early Muslims. The historical context of the word actually refers to someone who died within the first four hundred years after the Prophet Allah. The term later was revived as a slogan and movement. Do to the nature of reverting back to the old ways, they are ultra conservative, they want to return to the Golden Age of Islam.

Although the reverting back to the Golden Age of Islam refers to the Prophet Allah's time, fundamentally Salafi believe the Islamic tenet of purity from the start of the first human being, Adam. They even go so far as to call him the first prophet, as I'm sure many religions do (Christianity for one). That's how Islam separated itself from Christianity and Judaism, calling them corrupt, and reverting back to purity.

The Movement
Salafi is the name of a group of Muslims who imitate the Blessed Prophet in every aspect of life. This is a return to shari'a-minded orthodoxy, purifying Islam from unwarranted accretions. "The politicization of Salafi movements was a response to colonialism, intended to exert pressure to end foreign domination." (clogic) This sort of movement is about one hundred years old, thirteen centuries after Allah. Their basic premise is that religion can't truly be understood like it was back then during the Prophet's era. They value Tawhid, singling out Allah in all acts of worship. This puts weight on punishment over mercy for most, making them somewhat of an extremist group. But like all Islamic or Muslim religions and groups, this is not synonymous with terrorism or violence. It just means they follow doctrine with tight parameters.

"The "fundamentalism" of the Salaf, then, is a simple reaction to "the loss of roots," the result of capitalism's deterritorialization, which, according to Zizek "undermines every fixed social identity," such as the status of the believing Muslim. The recourse to Salafism, like to that of nationalism, emerges in order to protect the group from the traumatic disorientation of the processes of globalization, from the loss of ground caused by the disintegration of the really existing ummah." "Muslim longing for the past became even more crucial to Muslim identity after the Balkanization of the Middle East and its subsequent psychic splitting." (Maryam El-Shall)

Chapters of Salafi in the United States have been on the decline post 9/11, with barely a handful of them remaining. One factor, besides the apparent, is that the eastern Salafi believers did not care for the western. Looking to the premise of the movement, "only Muslims from Allah's era can really understand," and you can see why westerners would be even further off the mark. Additionally isolationism is to blame.

Offbeat Perceptions
While researching Salafi I found a lot of western literature criticizing them as a terrorist organization promoting violence. Although even al-Qaeda identifies themselves as Salafi. (Global security) But from my own assessment, however, it seems like they were scapegoated post 9/11 just like any other Islam group. But what struck me oddly was what a Muslim might say about a Salafi believer, "Mention the word 'Salafi' to a Muslim what often comes to mind is a criminal who marries several times." (Umarless) However, that was a rare clip.

I do believe Salafi are both peaceful and violent in nature. Islam is a peaceful message, yet it must also defend itself and spread at the same time... "Salafi projects therefore rely on memories of Islam's early battles in order to fight contemporary wars and reinvoke questions of survival and oneness in order to posit grounds for jihad against innocents." (Clogic)

The Salafi envisioned society is utopian based precisely for its impossibility, for its purely imaginative status, according to Maryam El-Shall. (clogic) Shall calls the Golden Age of Islam a complete fantasy, a product of select memory even. "The Golden Age of Islam is remembered as the period of "pure Islam," when, because Muslims practiced their faith perfectly, God rained down His blessings on them, ensuring their military and economic success and as well as their cultural dominance.7 Not accidentally, this period also coincides with the West's Dark Ages.8 It was a utopic moment in the history of Islam precisely because it never really existed, except in the contemporary Salafi imagination." (clogic) He summarizes the Salfi movement as one of "subjective unity," using that phrase based on Freud's definition of obsession with the past as a group.

"Part of the Salafi project, then, is not destruction of current Western hegemonic culture in the Muslim world and beyond, but an actual reconstruction of the past in the present for the creation of a kind of utopian future. In this way, then, the Salaf, like the Utopian, straddles two separate set of moments alternately. He looks to the past to correct the present and yet uses the present to create a future based dramatically on the ethos of a mythical past." (Maryam El-Shall)

Salafism is another generic term used similarly, as a Sunni Islamic school of thought.

Sources:
http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/nuh/salafi.htm
http://umarlee.com/2007/01/31/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-salafi-dawah-in-the-us-final/
http://clogic.eserver.org/2006/el-shall.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/intro/islam-salafi.htm

See also, Salafiyyah, an Islam movement.

Ahenobarbus was a cognomen used in ancient Rome meaning "gold beard." Its use seems to have been reserved exclusively for men of the Domitii gens (family), who may have received it in the early years of the Roman Republic. For those unfamiliar with the Roman system of naming, most men had three names: the praenomen, which was the equivalent of a first name; the nomen, which was the equivalent of a modern surname (which described the aforementioned gens); and a cognomen, which was something like a more specific surname either given to or adopted by one member of a certain gens for the purposes of differentiation. For example, the gens Junii was one of the oldest in Rome (with ties to the Etruscan kings), and had many branches. One member, Lucius Junius, was ironically given the cognomen "Brutus," which meant "simple" or "stupid," in recognition of his legendary shrewdness (think of huge tough guys being given the nickname "Tiny"). His direct descendants were thus both Junii and Brutii, including his famous descendant Marcus Junius Brutus.

The men of the Domitii who were from the Ahenobarbus branch were all given one of two praenomina: Gnaeus and Lucius. The reasons for this are somewhat obscure, but one story seems to have it that the first distinguished members of the branch lived during the early to middle Republican era and were either two brothers or a father and son with those respective names. Either way, the pattern was firmly and irrevocably established by the second century BC and all Ahenobarbi after this point are demonstrably named Lucius or Gnaeus. The first known Ahenobarbus of consular rank was a Gnaeus, who served in that position in 192 BC, apparently against the opposition of Scipio Africanus, who was at that time the first man in Rome given his nation-saving defeat of Hannibal in the Second Punic War. This makes his election all the more impressive and improbable; a comparable hypothetical upset would have been Michael Dukakis defeating George Bush in the presidential election of 1988. The Ahenobarbi had officially arrived as players in the Roman political scene.

This Gnaeus' grandson, also named Gnaeus, was elected consul in 122 BC and received a triumph (the highest military honor of ancient Rome) for his successes in Gaul. His son of the same name was to date the most accomplished member of the family, having held the offices of Tribune of the plebs, pontifex maximus (chief priest), consul (96 BC), and finally censor, the most senior office of the Republic. The consuls had all the executive authority, but it was the censors who were responsible for maintaining public morality and carrying out the census. This is significant because the Roman census did not just record residency, it recorded class. A patrician who fell out of favor with a given censor could find himself demoted to the rank of equestrian or even plebeian or could be kicked out of the Roman Senate for engaging in poor public behavior (for example, Cato removed a man from the Senate for kissing his wife on the cheek in public!). This Gnaeus' brother, Lucius, was consul for the year 94 BC.

The Ahenobarbi, like the rest of the Roman aristocracy, were forced to choose sides in the civil war between Gaius Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus in the first century BC. A certain Lucius (consul 54 BC) and his son Gnaeus (consul 32 BC) supported Pompey against Caesar, the former going so far as to command a Pompeian legion at the Battle of Pharsalus and dying there in 48 BC. His son abandoned Pompey and threw his lot in with Caesar, who won the war. After Caesar's assassination, Gnaeus allied himself with the Liberatores, (i.e. his cousin Brutus and Gaius Longinus Cassius), but later switched sides and joined Marcus Antonius and the forces of the Second Triumvirate. When Antonius and Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, the grand nephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar, came to blows, Gnaeus joined Octavian but died in 31 BC shortly after the conclusion of the war. Gnaeus' son, Lucius, was consul in the year 16 BC, and earned a reputation for bizarre and vexatious behavior that disgusted many of his contemporaries (but not, apparently, the Emperor Augustus, who named him in his will). Lucius' son, Gnaeus, was consul in 32 AD, and was married to Agrippina the Younger, the sister of the future Emperor Caligula. His reputation is similar to that of his father's, known as he was for his spitefulness and indolence.

The most famous Ahenobarbus is Lucius, the son of the most recently mentioned Gnaeus and his wife Agrippina, although history does not remember him by that name. Gnaeus died in 40 AD and his brother-in-law, the Emperor, was killed the following year. Caligula was succeeded by his uncle Claudius, who was a competent administrator but a horrible judge of character with a weakness for manipulative women. After a series of failed marriages, Claudius was seduced by his niece Agrippina, who eventually convinced him to adopt her son (his grand nephew) Lucius as his chief beneficiary (and primary successor) over his own biological son. Claudius, drunk with lust, relented and following Roman adoption convetions, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus became known as Nero Claudius Caesar Germanicus, usually known just by the name Nero. Nero succeeded Claudius after his mother allegedly poisoned the latter, and was considered an acceptable candidate for the highest office in the land because of his genetic acceptability (he was one of two living male blood descendants of Augustus; the other died under mysterious circumstances). Nero, of course, is famous for arranging the murder of his mother, subjecting the Roman populace to his singing and lyre-playing, starting the first major persecution of Christians in the Empire, and coopting a third of the city of Rome's public property for his own use after the Great Fire. Nero committed suicide in 68 after a widespread rebellion exploded against him with the words "what an artist the world is losing in me!"

The Ahenobarbi do not appear in the historical record after the death of Nero. The broader Domitii gens, however, continued to be prominent in Roman politics, with the emperors Titus and Domitian being distantly related to the clan on their mother's side and the third century-era barracks emperor Aurelian being a true, blue Domitius.