ABSTRACT
The criminalization of events and subjects was legally initiated through specific accusations, and no crime or criminal was recorded without an accuser bringing the matter to light. If this underscored the significance of accusation to the appearance of crime in this society, structured, shaped, and fed Roman patterns of criminalization. Standing criminal courts of the late republic were accusatorial rather than inquisitional in the sense that "no action could be initiated unless the citizen laid a formal accusation against another and thereby undertook to prosecute at the trial". The actual criminal trial started with the accusers' opening speeches, the defenses' reply, and then an examination of witnesses. Accusation could then be designated as a discrete rhetorical field with an intrinsic set of qualities to further the authority of emerging legal structures. It was thereby tied to the foundation of public law and the development of ideas around crime as an offense against the entire community that required initiating public responses.
