Roman Law
11/12/2007
Outline

 

XII TABLES: slavery (cont’d); Patronage; Delict

 

Illustrative Passages:

 

1.

Livy 2.5. [The story begins with a conspiracy to restore the Tarquins in 507 B.C. right after their expulsion.  The conspirators were caught as the result of the report of an informer, and the conspirators were executed.]  “After the execution, the informer was rewarded; in addition to a gift of money he was granted his liberty with citzen rights.  It was hoped that this measure might double the effect of the execution as a deterrent.  The informer is said to have been the first slave to be emancipated by touching with the vindicta (staff); some think that the word vindicta was derived from his name, Vindicius.  It was the custom subsequently to regard all slaves who were freed in this way as admitted to the rights of citizenship.”

2.

DH 2.9.1: “After Romulus had distinguished those of superior rank from their inferiors, he next established laws by which the duties of each were prescribed.  The patricians were to be priests, magistrates and judges, and were to assist him in the management of public affairs, devoting themselves to the business of the city.  The plebeians were excused from these duties, as being unacquainted with them and because of their small means wanting leisure to attend to them, but were to apply themselves to agriculture, the breeding of cattle and the exercise of gainful trades.  This was to prevent them from engaging in seditions, as happens  in other cities when either the magistrates mistreat the lowly, or the common people and the needy envy those in authority.  He placed the plebeians as a trust in the hands of the patricians, by allowing every plebeian to choose for his patron any patrician whom he himself wished . . . . The regulations which he then instituted concerning patronage and which long continued in use among the Romans were as follows:  It was the duty of the patricians to explain to their clients the laws, of which they were ignorant; to take the same care of them when absent as present, doing everything for them that fathers do for their sons with regard both to money and to the contracts that related to money; to bring suit on behalf of their clients when they were wronged in connexion with contracts, and to defend them against any who brought charges against them; and, to put the matter briefly, to secure for them both in private and in public affairs all that tranquillity of which they particularly stood in need.  It was the duty of the clients to assist their patrons in providing dowries for their daughters upon their marriage if the fathers had not sufficient means; to pay their ransom to the enemy if any of them or of their children were taken prisoner; to discharge out of their own purses their patrons’ losses in private suits and the pecuniary fines which they were condemned to pay to the State, making these contributions to them not as loans but as thank-offering; and to share with their patrons the costs incurred in their magistracies and dignities and other public expenditures, in the same manner as if they were their relations.  For both patrons and clients alike it was impious and unlawful to accuse each other in law-suits or to bear witness or to give their votes against each other or to be found in the number of each other’s enemies; and whoever was convicted of doing any of these things was guilty of treason by virtue of the law sanctioned by Romulus, and might lawfully be put to death by any man who so wished as a victim devoted to the Jupiter of the infernal regions.”

3.

The story of Lucius Veratius:
Labeo ... in the books that he wrote on the twelve tables: ... L. Veratius was an egregious nuisance and a frightful fool besides. He enjoyed slapping free men in the mouth. A slave followed him carrying a purse full of asses, so that whenever he slapped someone, he immediately ordered that twenty-five asses be counted out according to the XII Tables. On account of this, (Labeo) says, the praetors thought that this law was obsolete and to be abandoned, and they made an edict that they would give recuperatores for estimating iniuria.

4.

Henry Maine, Ancient Law 163-65 (5th ed. 1888):
The movement of progressive societies has been uniform in one respect. Through all its course it has been distinguished by the gradual dissolution of family dependency and the growth of individual obligation in its place. The individual is steadily substituted for the family, as the unithy of which civil laws take account. ... Not is it difficult to see what is he tie between man and man which replaces by degrees those forms of reciprocity in rights and duties whih have their origin in the Family. It is Contract. Starting, as from one terminus of history, from a condition of society in which all the relations of Persons are summed up in the relations of Family, we seem to have steadily moved towards a phase of social order in which all these relations arise from the free agreement of individuals. In Western Europe the progress achieved in this direction has been considerable. Thus the status of the Slave has disappeared-it has been superseded by the contractual relation of the servant to his master. ... All the forms of Status taken notice of in the Law of Persons were derived from, and to some extent are still coloured by, the powers and privileges anciently residing in the Family. If we then emply Status, agreeably with the usage of the best writers, to signify these personal conditions only, and avoid applying the term to such conditions as are the immediate or remote result of agreement, we may say that the movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract.

 

 

 

 

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