The article analyses the archaeology of the concept of ‘person’, from the Etruscan Phersu to the Roman ius personarum. The ‘law of persons’ was at the beginning just a tool for the domination of all those who were not patres familias, due to its origin in the sinister and sadistic Etruscan Phersu, a man-hunter with a mask. But, little by little, Phersu’s face changed and became human. The driving force behind this development, apart from natural law, was the idea of formal equality which morphed into a material category. The modern concept of person, which was developed in the middle ages, has its archaeological foundations in the persona of the ancients.
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