ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the main features and the reasons for which they were adopted in order to assess whether there is some continuity between ancient and modern amnesties. It explores the origins of the mechanism in pharaonic Egypt, classical Athens, the Roman world and ancient China. The chapter discusses the development of similar amnesty traditions in France and England throughout the second millennium. It reviews early clemency practices in the United States and presents a typology of ancient amnesties identifying their common features and classifying them in different categories depending on their object and purpose. The chapter explains how the mechanism of amnesty was used in ancient civilisations in Egypt, Athens, Rome and China. In the Roman world, legal institutions of clemency started to be developed at the beginning of the Principate, in the first century BC. The Church still exerted a great deal of influence in this period and it worked for the conservation of Roman clemency traditions.
