Definition
In Roman law, to summon a person to appear as a witness, or to call upon someone to testify. The act of antestari was a formal step in Roman civil procedure by which a party secured the attendance or acknowledgment of a witness. A person who touched another's ear in the presence of potential witnesses performed the ritual gesture associated with this act, signaling a call to testify and creating a public, recognizable demand for witness service.
Common Language
This section is omitted. Antestari is pure Latin legal terminology with no meaningful presence in ordinary modern or historical English usage.
Why It Matters in Research
Antestari is a term encountered almost exclusively in historical sources dealing with Roman civil procedure and, occasionally, in early common law treatises that drew on Roman law foundations. Researchers working in pre-modern legal history, comparative law, or the Roman law roots of evidence and witness procedure may encounter this term in Latin-language sources, glossaries, and encyclopedic digests.
The primary research trap is the garbled secondary-source transmission. Burrill's entry conflates antestari with antichronesis — a distinct Roman law concept concerning pledges and the exchange of uses — within the same note block. This appears to be a typesetting or editorial error in the source, not a genuine doctrinal connection. Researchers relying on Burrill alone may incorrectly associate antestari with pledge or bailment doctrine. The references to Story on Bailments and Grotius in that note belong to antichronesis, not to antestari.
For corpus researchers tracing the Roman law of witnesses into early American or English legal writing, antestari will rarely appear outside of Roman law glossaries, civilian tradition dictionaries (such as Calvinus's Lexicon Juridicum or Brissonius), and footnotes in treatises with strong civil law orientation. It does not appear in standard common law dictionaries of the same period as an operative term of English practice.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary English-language legal dictionary source for this term. Burrill defines antestari concisely as meaning to summon a person to testify, or to testify, citing Calvinus's Lexicon Juridicum and Brissonius as the underlying Roman law authorities. Both Calvinus and Brissonius were standard reference works for civilian legal terminology and provide the most authoritative exposition of antestari in the learned-law tradition.
As noted above, the Burrill entry as it appears in the source material runs together with material on antichronesis — a separate Roman law concept describing an arrangement where the creditor uses the pledged property in lieu of interest. This conflation is an artifact of the source text and should not be treated as a substantive doctrinal link. Grotius's discussion in De Jure Belli ac Pacis (lib. 2, c. 12) concerns antichronesis, not antestari.
No equivalent entry appears in later standard English legal dictionaries such as Black's Law Dictionary in its early editions, reflecting the term's effective disappearance from Anglo-American legal practice. The word survived as a historical and comparative reference point rather than as a term of active legal use.
Jurisdictional Note
Antestari has no operative role in any modern common law jurisdiction. It is relevant only in the context of Roman law and the civilian legal tradition. Researchers in Louisiana, Quebec, or other mixed civil law jurisdictions may encounter it in historical civilian sources but will not find it applied in modern courts.