res gestae

1. Things done; deeds.
2. Law. The facts that are admissible in evidence as the surrounding circumstances of the event to be proved.

[Latin rēs gestae : rēs, pl. of rēs, thing + gestae, feminine pl. past participle of gerere, to carry, show.]

[Latin, Things done.] Secondhand statements considered trustworthy for the purpose of admission as evidence in a lawsuit when repeated by a witness because they were made spontaneously and concurrently with an event.

Res gestae describes a common-law doctrine governing testimony. Under the hearsay rule, a court normally refuses to admit as evidence statements that a witness says he or she heard another person say. The doctrine of res gestae provided an exception to this rule. During the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth century, courts applied the exception by following an assortment of common-law rules. With the introduction of the Federal Rules of Evidence, federal courts abolished res gestae as a common-law doctrine and replaced it with explicit exceptions to the ban on hearsay. To varying degrees, state rules of evidence are modeled on the federal rules. Although the term is now infrequently used, the legacy of res gestae is an integral part of the modern framework of hearsay evidence.

Traditionally, two reasons have made hearsay inadmissible: unfairness and possible inaccuracy. Allowing a witness to repeat hearsay does not provide the accused with an opportunity to question the speaker of the original statement, and the witness may have misunderstood or misinterpreted the statement. Thus, in a trial, counsel can object to a witness's testimony as hearsay. But in the nineteenth century, the borrowing of the concept of res gestae from English law offered an exception to this rule. Res gestae is based on the belief that because certain statements are made naturally, spontaneously, and without deliberation during the course of an event, they carry a high degree of credibility and leave little room for misunderstanding or misinterpretation. The doctrine held that such statements are more trustworthy than other secondhand statements and therefore should be admissible as evidence.

As the common-law rule developed, it acquired a number of tests for determining admissibility. To be admissible, the statements must relate, explain, or characterize an event or transaction. They must be natural statements growing out of the event, as opposed to a narrative of a past, completed affair. Additionally, the statements must be spontaneous, evoked by the event itself, and not the result of premeditation. Finally, the original speaker must have participated in the transaction or witnessed the event in question. Thus, for example, a witness might testify that during a bank robbery, she or he heard another person shout, "That person is robbing the bank!" and the statement could be admitted as an exception to the ban on hearsay.

In practice, cases involving res gestae were usually decided by applying some variation of these tests. In the 1959 case of Carroll v. Guffey, 20 Ill. App. 2d 470, 156 N.E.2d 267, an Illinois appellate court heard the appeal of a defendant who was held liable for injuries sustained by another motorist in a car crash. The trial court had admitted the testimony of the plaintiff concerning unidentified eyewitnesses who allegedly saw the accident, over the objection of defense counsel who argued that the statements were hearsay. The appellate court ruled that the declarations of the eyewitnesses were not res gestae exceptions: they were not made concurrently with the collision, but afterward, and were only a narrative of what the eyewitnesses said had taken place. Thus the appellate court reversed the trial court's decision.

The process of refining the concept began in the 1920s, when the influential lawyer and educator Edmund M. Morgan attacked its pliability and vagueness: "[T]his troublesome expression owes its existence and persistence in our law of evidence to an inclination of judges and lawyers to avoid the toilsome exertion of exact analysis and precise thinking." In an attempt at clarification, Morgan developed seven categories for the exception. In the 1940s the Model Code of Evidence made further refinements, and by the 1970s the Federal Rules of Evidence had included elements of res gestae in Rule 803 as one of its many exceptions to the hearsay rule.

Things done; exploits.

Part of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti.

Res Gestae Divi Augusti, (Latin: "The Deeds of the Divine Augustus") is the funerary inscription of the first Roman emperor, Augustus, giving a first-person record of his life and accomplishments.

Contents 1 Structure of the text 1.1 Political career 1.2 Public benefactions 1.3 Military accomplishments 1.4 Political statement 1.5 Appendix 2 History 3 References 4 Bibliography 5 See also 6 External links

Structure of the text

The text consists of 35 paragraphs that are conventionally grouped in four sections,^[1] and a short introduction and post-mortem appendix.

Political career

The first part of the Res Gestae (paragraphs 2 – 14) is concerned with Augustus' political career, recording the offices and political honours that he held.

Public benefactions

The second part (paragraphs 15 – 24) lists Augustus' donations of money, land and grain to the citizens of Italy and his soldiers, as well as the public works and gladiatorial spectacles that he commissioned. The text is careful to point out that all this was paid for out of Augustus' own funds.

Military accomplishments

The third part (paragraphs 25 – 33) describes his military deeds and how he established alliances with other nations during his reign.

Political statement

The last part (paragraphs 34 – 35) sums up Augustus' exceptional position in the government.

Appendix

The appendix (written in the third person, and likely not by Augustus himself) summarizes the entire text, and lists various buildings he renovated or constructed; it states 600 million denarii (It is not possible to reliably convert this into a modern equivalent, but it was clearly more than anyone else in the Empire could afford) from his own funds were spent during his reign towards public projects.

History

The Monumentum Ancyranum in Ankara, Turkey.

According to the text it was written just before Augustus' death in AD 14, but it was probably written years earlier and likely went through many revisions.^{[citation needed]} Augustus left the text with his will, which instructed the Senate to set up the inscriptions. The original, which has not survived, was engraved upon a pair of bronze pillars and placed in front of Augustus' mausoleum. Many copies of the text were made and carved in stone on monuments or temples throughout the Roman Empire, some of which have survived; most notably, almost a full copy, written in the original Latin and a Greek translation was preserved on a temple to Augustus in Ancyra (the Monumentum Ancyranum of Ankara, Turkey); others have been found at Apollonia and Antioch, both in Pisidia.

By its very nature the Res Gestae is less objective history and more propaganda for the principate that Augustus instituted. It tends to gloss over the events between the assassination of Augustus' adoptive father Julius Caesar and the victory at Actium when his foothold on power was finally undisputed. Caesar's murderers Brutus and Cassius are not referred to by name, they are simply "those who killed my father." The Battle of Philippi is mentioned only passim and not by name. Mark Antony and Sextus Pompeius, Augustus' opponents in the East, remain equally anonymous; the former is "he with whom I fought the war," while the latter is merely a "pirate." Likewise, the text fails to mention his imperium maius and his exceptional tribunicial powers. Often quoted is Augustus' official position on his government: "From that time (27 BC, the end of the civil war) I surpassed all others in influence, yet my official powers were no greater than those of my colleague in office." This is in keeping with a reign that promoted itself from the beginning as a "restoration" of the old republic, with a leader who was nothing more than "first among equals," but was virtually akin to absolute monarchy by divine right, backed by the swords of the legions.

The Res Gestae was a unique public relations move for the first emperor of the Roman Empire, whose political career was in many ways experimental. If their frequent use as "history" by later historians (both ancient and modern) who characterized Augustus' rule according to categories he himself constructed in the Res Gestae is any indication, it is a rather successful piece of propaganda.

References

1. ^ Although there are other possible groupings; see discussion in Scheid, "Introduction", XXXVI-XLIII.

Bibliography

• Concetta Barini (1937), Res Gestae Divi Augusti ex Monumentis Ancyrano, Antiocheno, Apolloniensi, Rome.
• Alison Cooley (2009), Res Gestae divi Augusti, edition with introduction, translation, and commentary, Cambridge University Press.
• Jean Gagé (1935), Res gestae divi Augusti ex monumentis Ancyrano et Antiocheno latinis, Paris.
• Theodor Mommsen. Res gestae Divi Augusti ex monumentis Ancyrano et Apolloniensi. Berolini : Weidmannos, 1883.
• John Scheid. Res Gestae Divi Augusti: hauts faits du divin Auguste. Paris: Belles Lettres, 2007.
• Hans Volkmann (1942), Res gestae Divi Augusti Das Monumentum Ancyranum, Leipzig.

See also

• Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, whose sarcophagus carries a short inscription in Saturnian metre commemorating his deeds
• Behistun Inscription, commissioned by Darius I of Persia

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Category:Res gestae Divi Augusti

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Res Gestae

• The Res Gestae at LacusCurtius, in Latin, Greek and English
• The Res Gestae (in Latin) at The Latin Library
• The Res Gestae at the Internet Classics Archive (in English)
• Life and deeds of Augustus (in English)

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