THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

I. The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the Monarchy

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

CHAPTER XI - Law and Justice

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Page 14

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)

6. Cf. I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium

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.

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