Porcias laws were three laws of the sixth century BC. C. of Rome whose dates and content are not known with certainty. Its number consists of Cicero: that three sunt tria Porciorum (De Republica, II, 31 & 54) Its date is placed by Lange in years 198, 194 and 184 a. C .; but Maynz notes that they must be later than the year 585 of Rome, date as far as the annals of Livy, which do not contain the history of these laws. The same Maynz says that according to a silver coin that is in Eckhel (V, 286) it is probable that the author of one of these laws was a certain Poreca Laeca.
As for its content, it is indicated by Livy, saying: Porcia tamen lex ... gravi poena, if you wanted to verberasset, necassetque civem romanum, sanxit, with the indication of which Cicero and Salustio agree; but we do not know whether all three laws disposed of the same or not, or what serious penalty they imposed. Lange thinks that the first of these laws would be pro tergo civium lata, that is, the content of which tells us Livy; the second would allow the provocation ad populum outside of Rome and that even it could not be invoked longius ab urbe mille passum (although Mommsen doubts that this appeal would ever be given outside Rome) and the third would limit the military imperium prohibiting the officers the fustium verbatio on the citizen soldiers. The tendency of these laws was to limit the imposition of the death penalty on citizens, especially for political reasons. Already the Law of the XII Tables had arranged that only by a decision of the centuried elections (comitiatus maximus) could the citizen be deprived of life, freedom or citizenship; but this was breached, so that there was a need to dictate the Porcia Law of tergo civium lata, although after that the bloody reaction that followed the defeat of Tiberio Graco violated again such provisions, which were again sanctioned by the Sempronia Law of Gaius Graco in the year 631 of Rome. As for the penalty imposed by the Porcia Law, it was perhaps the same as that of maiestas or perduellio. In these dispositions San Pablo was founded to elude the being whipped, claiming its quality of Roman citizen. Bibliography
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