Book 13
12
IN one of the letters of Ateius Capito we read Fr. 19, Huschke: ii. p. 287, Bremer. that Antistius Labeo was exceedingly learned in the laws and customs of the Roman people and in the civil law. But, he adds, an excessive and mad love of freedom possessed the man, to such a degree that, although the deified Augustus was then emperor and was ruling the State, Labeo looked upon nothing as lawful and accepted nothing, unless he had found it ordered and sanctioned by the old Roman law. He then goes on to relate the reply of this same Labeo, when he was summoned by the messenger of a tribune of the commons. He says: When the tribunes of the commons had been appealed to by a woman against Labeo and had sent to him at the Gallianum Probably Labeo's country place. He spent half the year in retirement (Dig. i. 2. 2.47), and praedia Galliana are mentioned in C.I.L. iii. 536, and ix. 1455, col. iii, lines 62—64. bidding him come and answer the woman's charge, he ordered the messenger to return and say to the tribunes that they had the right to summon neither him nor anyone else, since according to the usage of our forefathers the tribunes of the commons had the power of arrest, but not of summons; that they might therefore come and order his arrest, but they did not have the right to summon him when absent.
