L'idea romana del 'perpetuarsi dell'obbligazione'e il problema della responsabilità contrattuale

The perpetuatio obligationis is the result, in a terminology proper to the jurisprudence subsequent to the veteres, of a creative interpretation of the late-republican jurisprudence which will assume in the subse- quent tradition the relevant qualification of constitutio. The terminological formulation may also have had a modernization in the writing of the Severian jurist Paolo, but without altering its dogmatic meaning. It is an up-to-date expression of what was technically the effect of the constitutio veterum on the level of the claimant in the event of perishing of the thing object of the rem dare oportere for a cause attributable to the debtor. The veteres believed, that the persistence of actionability with condictio of the rem dare oportere was based precisely on the idea that rem dare oportere was perpetuated even though the due thing perished.