Law and Justice
Modern Character of Italian Culture
History, as such, cannot reproduce the life of a people in the
infinite variety of its details; it must be content with exhibiting
the development of that life as a whole. The doings and dealings,
the thoughts and imaginings of the individual, however strongly
they may reflect the characteristics of the national mind, form
no part of history. Nevertheless it seems necessary to make some
attempt to indicate--only in the most general outlines--the features
of individual life in the case of those earlier ages which are,
so far as history is concerned, all but lost in oblivion; for it
is in this field of research alone that we acquire some idea of
the breadth of the gulf which separates our modes of thinking and
feeling from those of the civilized nations of antiquity. Tradition,
with its confused mass of national names and its dim legends,
resembles withered leaves which with difficulty we recognize to
have once been green. Instead of threading that dreary maze and
attempting to classify those shreds of humanity, the Chones and
Oenotrians, the Siculi and the Pelasgi, it will be more to the
purpose to inquire how the real life of the people in ancient Italy
expressed itself in their law, and their ideal life in religion;
how they farmed and how they traded; and whence the several nations
derived the art of writing and other elements of culture. Scanty
as our knowledge in this respect is in reference to the Roman people
and still more so in reference to the Sabellians and Etruscans,
even the slight and very defective information which is attainable
will enable the mind to associate with these names some more or
less clear glimpse of the once living reality. The chief result of
such a view (as we may here mention by way of anticipation) may be
summed up in saying that fewer traces comparatively of the primitive
state of things have been preserved in the case of the Italians,
and of the Romans in particular, than in the case of any other
Indo-Germanic race. The bow and arrow, the war-chariot, the incapacity
of women to hold property, the acquiring of wives by purchase,
the primitive form of burial, blood-revenge, the clan-constitution
conflicting with the authority of the community, a vivid natural
symbolism --all these, and numerous phenomena of a kindred character,
must be presumed to have lain at the foundation of civilization in
Italy as well as elsewhere; but at the epoch when that civilization
comes clearly into view they have already wholly disappeared, and
only the comparison of kindred races informs us that such things
once existed. In this respect Italian history begins at a far
later stage of civilization than e.g. the Greek or the Germanic,
and from the first it exhibits a comparatively modern character.
The laws of most of the Italian stocks are lost in oblivion. Some
information regarding the law of the Latin land alone has survived
in Roman tradition.
Jurisdiction
All jurisdiction was vested in the community or, in other words,
in the king, who administered justice or "command" (-ius-) on
the "days of utterance" (-dies fasti-) at the "judgment platform"
(-tribunal-) in the place of public assembly, sitting on the
"chariot-seat" (-sella curulis-);(1) by his side stood his "messengers"
(-lictores-), and before him the person accused or the "parties"
(-rei-). No doubt in the case of slaves the decision lay primarily
with the master, and in the case of women with the father, husband,
or nearest male relative;(2) but slaves and women were not primarily
reckoned as members of the community. Over sons and grandsons who
were -in potestate- the power of the -pater familias- subsisted
concurrently with the royal jurisdiction; that power, however,
was not a jurisdiction in the proper sense of the term, but simply
a consequence of the father's inherent right of property in his
children. We find no traces of any jurisdiction appertaining to
the clans as such, or of any judicature at all that did not derive
its authority from the king. As regards the right of self-redress
and in particular the avenging of blood, we still find perhaps in
legends an echo of the original principle that a murderer, or any
one who should illegally protect a murderer, might justifiably be
slain by the kinsmen of the person murdered; but these very legends
characterize this principle as objectionable,(3) and from their
statements blood-revenge would appear to have been very early
suppressed in Rome through the energetic assertion of the authority
of the community. In like manner we perceive in the earliest Roman
law no trace of that influence which under the oldest Germanic
institutions the comrades of the accused and the people present
were entitled to exercise over the pronouncing of judgment; nor
do we find in the former any evidence of the usage so frequent in
the latter, by which the mere will and power to maintain a claim
with arms in hand were treated as judicially necessary or at any
rate admissible.
Crimes
Judicial procedure took the form of a public or a private process,
according as the king interposed of his own motion or only when
appealed to by the injured party. The former course was taken
only in cases which involved a breach of the public peace. First
of all, therefore, it was applicable in the case of public treason
or communion with the public enemy (-proditio-), and in that of
violent rebellion against the magistracy (-perduellio-). But the
public peace was also broken by the foul murderer (-parricida-),
the sodomite, the violator of a maiden's or matron's chastity, the
incendiary, the false witness, by those, moreover, who with evil
spells conjured away the harvest, or who without due title cut
the corn by night in the field entrusted to the protection of the
gods and of the people; all of these were therefore dealt with as
though they had been guilty of high treason. The king opened and
conducted the process, and pronounced sentence after conferring with
the senators whom he had called in to advise with him. He was at
liberty, however, after he had initiated the process, to commit
the further handling and the adjudication of the matter to deputies
who were, as a rule, taken from the senate. The later extraordinary
deputies, the two men for adjudicating on rebellion (-duoviri
perduellionis-) and the later standing deputies the "trackers of
murder" (-quaestores parricidii-) whose primary duty was to search
out and arrest murderers, and who therefore exercised in some
measure police functions, do not belong to the regal period, but may
probably have sprung out of, or been suggested by, certain of its
institutions. Imprisonment while the case was undergoing investigation
was the rule; the accused might, however, be released on bail.
Torture to compel confession was only applied to slaves. Every one
convicted of having broken the public peace expiated his offence with
his life. The modes of inflicting capital punishment were various:
the false witness, for example, was hurled from the stronghold-rock;
the harvest-thief was hanged; the incendiary was burnt. The king
could not grant pardon, for that power was vested in the community
alone; but the king might grant or refuse to the condemned permission
to appeal for mercy (-provocatio-). In addition to this, the law
recognized an intervention of the gods in favour of the condemned
criminal. He who had made a genuflection before the priest of
Jupiter might not be scourged on the same day; any one under fetters
who set foot in his house had to be released from his bonds; and
the life of a criminal was spared, if on his way to execution he
accidentally met one of the sacred virgins of Vesta.
Punishment of Offenses against Order
The king inflicted at his discretion fines payable to the state for
trespasses against order and for police offences; they consisted
in a definite number (hence the name -multa-) of cattle or sheep.
It was in his power also to pronounce sentence of scourging.
Law of Private Offenses
In all other cases, where the individual alone was injured and
not the public peace, the state only interposed upon the appeal of
the party injured, who caused his opponent, or in case of need by
laying violent hands on him compelled him, to appear personally along
with himself before the king. When both parties had appeared and
the plaintiff had orally stated his demand, while the defendant had
in similar fashion refused to comply with it, the king might either
investigate the cause himself or have it disposed of by a deputy
acting in his name. The regular form of satisfaction for such an
injury was a compromise arranged between the injurer and the injured;
the state only interfered supplementarily, when the aggressor did
not satisfy the party aggrieved by an adequate expiation (-poena-),
when any one had his property detained or his just demand was not
fulfilled.
Theft
Under what circumstances during this epoch theft was regarded as
at all expiable, and what in such an event the person injured was
entitled to demand from the thief, cannot be ascertained. But
the injured party with reason demanded heavier compensation from
a thief caught in the very act than from one detected afterwards,
since the feeling of exasperation which had to be appeased was more
vehement in the case of the former than in that of the latter. If
the theft appeared incapable of expiation, or if the thief was not
in a position to pay the value demanded by the injured party and
approved by the judge, he was by the judge assigned as a bondsman
to the person from whom he had stolen.
Injuries
In cases of damage (-iniuria-) to person or to property, where the
injury was not of a very serious description, the aggrieved party
was probably obliged unconditionally to accept compensation; if,
on the other hand, any member was lost in consequence of it, the
maimed person could demand eye for eye and tooth for tooth.
Property
Since the arable land among the Romans was long cultivated upon
the system of joint possession and was not distributed until a
comparatively late age, the idea of property was primarily associated
not with immoveable estate, but with "estate in slaves and cattle"
(-familia pecuniaque-). It was not the right of the stronger that
was regarded as the foundation of a title to it; on the contrary,
all property was considered as conferred by the community upon the
individual burgess for his exclusive possession and use; and therefore
it was only the burgess, and such as the community accounted in
this respect as equal to burgesses, that were capable of holding
property. All property passed freely from hand to hand. The Roman
law made no substantial distinction between moveable and immoveable
estate (from the time that the latter was regarded as private
property at all), and recognized no absolute vested interest of
children or other relatives in the paternal or family property.
Nevertheless it was not in the power of the father arbitrarily
to deprive his children of their right of inheritance, because he
could neither dissolve the paternal power nor execute a testament
except with consent of the whole community, which might be, and
certainly under such circumstances often was, refused. In his
lifetime no doubt the father might make dispositions disadvantageous
to his children; for the law was sparing of personal restrictions
on the proprietor and allowed, upon the whole, every grown-up
man freely to dispose of his property. The regulation, however,
under which he who alienated his hereditary property and deprived
his children of it was placed by order of the magistrate under
guardianship like a lunatic, was probably as ancient as the period
when the arable land was first divided and thereby private property
generally acquired greater importance for the commonwealth. In
this way the two antagonistic principles--the unlimited right of
the owner to dispose of his own, and the preservation of the family
property unbroken--were as far as possible harmonized in the Roman
law. Permanent restrictions on property were in no case allowed,
with the exception of servitudes such as those indispensable in
husbandry. Heritable leases and ground-rents charged upon property
could not legally exist. The law as little recognized mortgaging;
but the same purpose was served by the immediate delivery of the
property in pledge to the creditor as if he were its purchaser,
who thereupon gave his word of honour (-fiducia-) that he would not
alienate the object pledged until the payment fell due, and would
restore it to his debtor when the sum advanced had been repaid.
Contracts
Contracts concluded between the state and a burgess, particularly
the obligation given by those who became sureties for a payment
to the state (-praevides-, -praedes-), were valid without further
formality. On the other hand, contracts between private persons
under ordinary circumstances gave no claim for legal aid on the
part of the state. The only protection of the creditor was the
debtor's word of honour which was held in high esteem after the
wont of merchants, and possibly also, in those frequent cases where
an oath had been added, the fear of the gods who avenged perjury.
The only contracts legally actionable were those of betrothal (the
effect of which was that the father, in the event of his failing
to give the promised bride, had to furnish satisfaction and
compensation), of purchase (-mancipatio-), and of loan (-nexum-).
A purchase was held to be legally concluded when the seller delivered
the article purchased into the hand of the buyer (-mancipare-) and
the buyer at the same time paid to the seller the stipulated price
in presence of witnesses. This was done, after copper superseded
sheep and cattle as the regular standard of value, by weighing out
the stipulated quantity of copper in a balance adjusted by a neutral
person.(4) These conditions having been complied with, the seller
had to answer for his being the owner, and in addition seller and
purchaser had to fulfil every stipulation specially agreed on; the
party failing to do so made reparation to the other, just as if he
had deprived him of the article in question. But a purchase only
founded an action in the event of its being a transaction for
ready money: a purchase on credit neither gave nor took away the
right of property, and constituted no ground of action. A loan
was negotiated in a similar way; the creditor weighed over to the
debtor in presence of witnesses the stipulated quantity of copper
under the obligation (-nexum-) of repayment. In addition to
the capital the debtor had to pay interest, which under ordinary
circumstances probably amounted to ten per cent per annum.(5) The
repayment of the loan took place, when the time came, with similar
forms.
Private Process
If a debtor to the state did not fulfil his obligations, he was
without further ceremony sold with all that he had; the simple
demand on the part of the state was sufficient to establish the
debt. If on the other hand a private person informed the king of
any violation of his property (-vindiciae-) or if repayment of the
loan received did not duly take place, the procedure depended on
whether the facts relating to the cause needed to be established,
which was ordinarily the case with actions as to property, or were
already clearly apparent, which in the case of actions as to loans
could easily be accomplished according to the current rules of law
by means of the witnesses. The establishment of the facts assumed
the form of a wager, in which each party made a deposit (-sacramentum-)
against the contingency of his being worsted; in important causes
when the value involved was greater than ten oxen, a deposit of
five oxen, in causes of less amount, a deposit of five sheep. The
judge then decided who had gained the wager, whereupon the deposit
of the losing party fell to the priests for behoof of the public
sacrifices. The party who lost the wager and allowed thirty days
to elapse without giving due satisfaction to his opponent, and the
party whose obligation to pay was established from the first--consequently,
as a rule, the debtor who had got a loan and had not witnesses to
attest its repayment--became liable to proceedings in execution
"by laying on of hands" (-manus iniectio-); the plaintiff seized
him wherever he found him, and brought him to the bar of the judge
simply to satisfy the acknowledged debt. The party seized was not
allowed to defend himself; a third person might indeed intercede for
him and represent this act of violence as unwarranted (-vindex-),
in which case the proceedings were stayed; but such an intercession
rendered the intercessor personally responsible, for which reason
the proletarian could not be intercessor for the tribute-paying
burgess. If neither satisfaction nor intercession took place, the
king adjudged the party seized to his creditor, so that the latter
could lead him away and keep him like a slave. After the expiry
of sixty days during which the debtor had been three times exposed
in the market-place and proclamation had been made to ascertain
whether any one would have compassion upon him, if these steps were
without effect, his creditors had the right to put him to death
and to divide his carcase, or to sell him with his children and his
effects into foreign slavery, or to keep him at home in a slave's
stead; for such an one could not by the Roman law, so long as he
remained within the bounds of the Roman community, become completely
a slave.(6) Thus the Roman community protected every man's estate
and effects with unrelenting rigour as well from the thief and
the injurer, as from the unauthorized possessor and the insolvent
debtor.
Guardianship
Protection was in like manner provided for the estate of persons
not capable of bearing arms and therefore not capable of protecting
their own property, such as minors and lunatics, and above all
for that of women; in these cases the nearest heirs were called to
undertake the guardianship.
Law of Inheritance
After a man's death his property fell to the nearest heirs: in the
division all who were equal in proximity of relationship--women
included--shared alike, and the widow along with her children was
admitted to her proportional share. A dispensation from the legal
order of succession could only be granted by the assembly of the
people; previous to which the consent of the priests had to be
obtained on account of the ritual obligations attaching to succession.
Such dispensations appear nevertheless to have become at an early
period very frequent. In the event of a dispensation not being
procured, the want of it might be in some measure remedied by
means of the completely free control which every one had over his
property during his lifetime. His whole property was transferred
to a friend, who distributed it after death according to the wishes
of the deceased.
Manumission
Manumission was unknown to the law of very early times. The owner
might indeed refrain from exercising his proprietary rights; but
this did not cancel the existing impossibility of master and slave
coming under mutual obligations; still less did it enable the slave
to acquire, in relation to the community, the rights of a guest
or of a burgess. Accordingly manumission must have been at first
simply -de facto-, not -de jure-; and the master cannot have been
debarred from the possibility of again at pleasure treating the
freedman as a slave. But there was a departure from this principle
in cases where the master came under obligation not merely towards
the slave, but towards the community, to leave him in possession
of freedom. There was no special legal form, however, for thus
binding the master--the best proof that there was at first no
such thing as a manumission,--but those methods were employed for
this object which the law otherwise presented, testament, action,
or census. If the master had either declared his slave free when
executing his last will in the assembly of the people, or had allowed
his slave to claim freedom in his own presence before a judge or
to get his name inscribed in the valuation-roll, the freedman was
regarded not indeed as a burgess, but as personally free in relation
to his former master and his heirs, and was accordingly looked upon
at first as a client, and in later times as a plebeian.(7)
The emancipation of a son encountered greater difficulties than
that of a slave; for while the relation of master to slave was
accidental and therefore capable of being dissolved at will, the
father could never cease to be father. Accordingly in later times
the son was obliged, in order to get free from the father, first
to enter into slavery and then to be set free out of this latter
state; but in the period now before us no emancipation of sons can
have as yet existed.
Clients and Foreigners
Such were the laws under which burgesses and clients lived in Rome.
Between these two classes, so far as we can see, there subsisted from
the beginning complete equality of private rights. The foreigner
on the other hand, if he had not submitted to a Roman patron and thus
lived as a client, was beyond the pale of the law both in person
and in property. Whatever the Roman burgess took from him was
as rightfully acquired as was the shellfish, belonging to nobody,
which was picked up by the sea-shore; but in the case of ground
lying beyond the Roman bounds, while the Roman burgess might take
practical possession, he could not be regarded as in a legal sense
its proprietor; for the individual burgess was not entitled to
advance the bounds of the community. The case was different in
war: whatever the soldier who was fighting in the ranks of the levy
gained, whether moveable or immoveable property, fell not to him,
but to the state, and accordingly here too it depended upon the
state whether it would advance or contract its bounds.
Exceptions from these general rules were created by special
state-treaties, which secured certain rights to the members of
foreign communities within the Roman state. In particular, the
perpetual league between Rome and Latium declared all contracts
between Romans and Latins to be valid in law, and at the same time
instituted in their case an accelerated civil process before sworn
"recoverers" (-reciperatores-). As, contrary to Roman usage,
which in other instances committed the decision to a single judge,
these always sat in plural number and that number uneven, they are
probably to be conceived as a court for the cognizance of commercial
dealings, composed of arbiters from both nations and an umpire.
They sat in judgment at the place where the contract was entered
into, and were obliged to have the process terminated at latest
in ten days. The forms, under which the dealings between Romans
and Latins were conducted, were of course the general forms which
regulated the mutual dealings of patricians and plebeians; for
the -mancipatio- and the -nexum- were originally not at all formal
acts, but the significant expression of legal ideas which held a
sway at least as extensive as the range of the Latin language.
Dealings with countries strictly foreign were carried on in a
different fashion and by means of other forms. In very early times
treaties as to commerce and legal redress must have been entered
into with the Caerites and other friendly peoples, and must have
formed the basis of the international private law (-ius gentium-),
which gradually became developed in Rome alongside of the law of
the land. An indication of the formation of such a law is found
in the remarkable -mutuum-, "the exchange" (from -mutare- like
-dividuus-)--a form of loan, which was not based like the -nexum-
upon a binding declaration of the debtor expressly emitted before
witnesses, but upon the mere transit of the money from one hand
to another, and which as evidently originated in dealings with
foreigners as the -nexum- in business dealings at home. It is
accordingly a significant fact that the word reappears in Sicilian
Greek as --moiton--; and with this is to be connected the reappearance
of the Latin -carcer- in the Sicilian --karkaron--. Since it is
philologically certain that both words were originally Latin, their
occurrence in the local dialect of Sicily becomes an important
testimony to the frequency of the dealings of Latin traders in
the island, which led to their borrowing money there and becoming
liable to that imprisonment for debt, which was everywhere in the
earlier systems of law the consequence of the non-repayment of a
loan. Conversely, the name of the Syracusan prison, "stone-quarries"
or --latomiai--, was transferred at an early period to the enlarged
Roman state-prison, the -lautumiae-.
Character of the Roman Law
We have derived our outline of these institutions mainly from
the earliest record of the Roman common law prepared about half a
century after the abolition of the monarchy; and their existence in
the regal period, while doubtful perhaps as to particular points of
detail, cannot be doubted in the main. Surveying them as a whole,
we recognize the law of a far-advanced agricultural and mercantile
city, marked alike by its liberality and its consistency. In
its case the conventional language of symbols, such as e. g. the
Germanic laws exhibit, has already quite disappeared. There is no
doubt that such a symbolic language must have existed at one time
among the Italians. Remarkable instances of it are to be found in
the form of searching a house, wherein the searcher must, according
to the Roman as well as the Germanic custom, appear without upper
garment merely in his shirt; and especially in the primitive
Latin formula for declaring war, in which we meet with two symbols
occurring at least also among the Celts and the Germans--the "pure
herb" (-herba pura-, Franconian -chrene chruda-) as a symbol of
the native soil, and the singed bloody staff as a sign of commencing
war. But with a few exceptions, in which reasons of religion
protected the ancient usages--to which class the -confarreatio-
as well as the declaration of war by the college of Fetiales
belonged--the Roman law, as we know it, uniformly and on principle
rejects the symbol, and requires in all cases neither more nor
less than the full and pure expression of will. The delivery of an
article, the summons to bear witness, the conclusion of marriage,
were complete as soon as the parties had in an intelligible manner
declared their purpose; it was usual, indeed, to deliver the article
into the hand of the new owner, to pull the person summoned as
a witness by the ear, to veil the bride's head and to lead her in
solemn procession to her husband's house; but all these primitive
practices were already, under the oldest national law of the
Romans, customs legally worthless. In a way entirely analogous to
the setting aside of allegory and along with it of personification
in religion, every sort of symbolism was on principle expelled from
their law. In like manner that earliest state of things presented
to us by the Hellenic as well as the Germanic institutions, wherein
the power of the community still contends with the authority of
the smaller associations of clans or cantons that are merged in
it, is in Roman law wholly superseded; there is no alliance for the
vindication of rights within the state, to supplement the state's
imperfect aid, by mutual offence and defence; nor is there any
serious trace of vengeance for bloodshed, or of the family property
restricting the individual's power of disposal. Such institutions
must probably at one time have existed among the Italians; traces
of them may perhaps be found in particular institutions of ritual,
e. g. in the expiatory goat, which the involuntary homicide was
obliged to give to the nearest of kin to the slain; but even at the
earliest period of Rome which we can conceive this stage had long
been transcended. The clan and the family doubtless were not
annihilated in the Roman community; but the theoretical as well
as the practical omnipotence of the state in its own sphere was no
more limited by them than by the freedom which the state granted
and guaranteed to the burgess. The ultimate foundation of law was
in all cases the state; freedom was simply another expression for
the right of citizenship in its widest sense; all property was
based on express or tacit transference by the community to the
individual; a contract was valid only so far as the community by
its representatives attested it, a testament only so far as the
community confirmed it. The provinces of public and private law were
definitely and clearly discriminated: the former having reference
to crimes against the state, which immediately called for the
judgment of the state and always involved capital punishment; the
latter having reference to offences against a fellow-burgess or a
guest, which were mainly disposed of in the way of compromise by
expiation or satisfaction made to the party injured, and were never
punished with the forfeit of life, but, at most, with the loss of
freedom. The greatest liberality in the permission of commerce and
the most rigorous procedure in execution went hand in hand; just
as in commercial states at the present day the universal right to
draw bills of exchange appears in conjunction with a strict procedure
in regard to them. The burgess and the client stood in their
dealings on a footing of entire equality; state-treaties conceded
a comprehensive equality of rights also to the guest; women were
placed completely on a level in point of legal capacity with men,
although restricted in action; the boy had scarcely grown up when
he received at once the most comprehensive powers in the disposal
of his estate, and every one who could dispose at all was as
sovereign in his own sphere as was the state in public affairs. A
feature eminently characteristic was the system of credit. There
did not exist any credit on landed security, but instead of a debt
on mortgage the step which constitutes at present the final stage
in mortgage-procedure --the delivery of the property from the debtor
to the creditor--took place at once. On the other hand personal
credit was guaranteed in the most summary, not to say extravagant
fashion; for the lawgiver entitled the creditor to treat his insolvent
debtor like a thief, and granted to him in entire legislative earnest
what Shylock, half in jest, stipulated for from his mortal enemy,
guarding indeed by special clauses the point as to the cutting off
too much more carefully than did the Jew. The law could not have
more clearly expressed its design, which was to establish at once
an independent agriculture free of debt and a mercantile credit,
and to suppress with stringent energy all merely nominal ownership
and all breaches of fidelity. If we further take into consideration
the right of settlement recognized at an early date as belonging
to all the Latins,(8) and the validity which was likewise early
pronounced to belong to civil marriage,(9) we shall perceive that
this state, which made the highest demands on its burgesses and
carried the idea of subordinating the individual to the interest of
the whole further than any state before or since has done, only did
and only could do so by itself removing the barriers to intercourse
and unshackling liberty quite as much as it subjected it to
restriction. In permission or in prohibition the law was always
absolute. As the foreigner who had none to intercede for him was
like the hunted deer, so the guest was on a footing of equality
with the burgess. A contract did not ordinarily furnish a ground
of action, but where the right of the creditor was acknowledged,
it was so all-powerful that there was no deliverance for the poor
debtor, and no humane or equitable consideration was shown towards
him. It seemed as if the law found a pleasure in presenting on all
sides its sharpest spikes, in drawing the most extreme consequences,
in forcibly obtruding on the bluntest understanding the tyrannic
nature of the idea of right. The poetical form and the genial
symbolism, which so pleasingly prevail in the Germanic legal
ordinances, were foreign to the Roman; in his law all was clear and
precise; no symbol was employed, no institution was superfluous.
It was not cruel; everything necessary was performed without much
ceremony, even the punishment of death; that a free man could not
be tortured was a primitive maxim of Roman law, to obtain which
other peoples have had to struggle for thousands of years. Yet this
law was frightful in its inexorable severity, which we cannot suppose
to have been very greatly mitigated by humanity in practice, for
it was really the law of the people; more terrible than Venetian
-piombi- and chambers of torture was that series of living entombments
which the poor man saw yawning before him in the debtors' towers
of the rich. But the greatness of Rome was involved in, and was
based upon, the fact that the Roman people ordained for itself and
endured a system of law, in which the eternal principles of freedom
and of subordination, of property and of legal redress, reigned
and still at the present day reign unadulterated and unmodified.
Notes for Book I Chapter XI
1. This "chariot-seat"--philologically no other explanation can
well be given (comp. Servius ad Aen. i. 16)--is most simply explained
by supposing that the king alone was entitled to ride in a chariot
within the city (v. The King)--whence originated the privilege
subsequently accorded to the chief magistrate on solemn occasions--and
that originally, so long as there was no elevated tribunal, he
gave judgment, at the comitium or wherever else he wished, from
the chariot-seat.
2. I. V. The Housefather and His Household
3. The story of the death of king Tatius, as given by Plutarch
(Rom. 23, 24), viz. that kinsmen of Tatius had killed envoys from
Laurentum; that Tatius had refused the complaint of the kinsmen
of the slain for redress; that they then put Tatius to death; that
Romulus acquitted the murderers of Tatius, on the ground that murder
had been expiated by murder; but that, in consequence of the penal
judgments of the gods that simultaneously fell upon Rome and
Laurentum, the perpetrators of both murders were in the sequel
subjected to righteous punishment--this story looks quite like a
historical version of the abolition of blood-revenge, just as the
introduction of the -provocatio- lies at the foundation of the myth
of the Horatii. The versions of the same story that occur elsewhere
certainly present considerable variations, but they seem to be
confused or dressed up.
4. The -mancipatio- in its developed form must have been more recent
than the Servian reform, as the selection of mancipable objects,
which had for its aim the fixing of agricultural property, shows,
and as even tradition must have assumed, for it makes Servius the
inventor of the balance. But in its origin the -mancipatio- must
be far more ancient; for it primarily applies only to objects which
are acquired by grasping with the hand, and must therefore in its
earliest form have belonged to the epoch when property consisted
essentially in slaves and cattle (-familia pecuniaque-). The enumeration
of those objects which had to be acquired by -mancipatio-, falls
accordingly to be ranked as a Servian innovation; the -mancipatio-
itself, and consequently the use also of the balance and of copper,
are older. Beyond doubt -mancipatio- was originally the universal
form of purchase, and occurred in the case of all articles even
after the Servian reform; it was only a misunderstanding of later
ages which put upon the rule, that certain articles had to be
transferred by -mancipatio-, the construction that these articles
only and no others could be so transferred.
5. Viz. for the year of ten months one twelfth part of the capital
(-uncia-), which amounts to 8 1/3 per cent for the year of ten,
and 10 per cent for the fear of twelve, months.
6. I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium
7. I. VI. Dependents and Guests.
8. I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium
9. I. VI. Class of --Metoeci-- Subsisting by the Side of the
Community