Plinio il vecchio, le molae e il dilemma dell'instrumentum

The essay analyzes the jurisprudential approach to the classification of mo lae, evaluating the possible exhaustiveness of the division into molae manu ariae and molae iumentariae, as it appears in the jurisprudential fragments taken into consideration. In reality, Pliny the Elder, Vitruvius and Palladius speak explicitly of the wide diffusion of the molae aquariae as well: the doc trine has sometimes expressed itself in favor of bipartition in an exclusive sense, at least until the end of the classical era. This traditional bipartition f its perfectly only to the description of the “technological” means of the pro duction model that was strongly imposing itself in the late Republican pe riod, when, little by little, medium and large funds replaced the traditional small fund so characteristic of Roman republican history. The combined analysis of literary, archaeological and legal sources allows us to understand how the silence of the legal ones regarding the molae aquariae is not neces sarily a sign of the concrete absence of a fundamental technological tool.