Book 3
220
In the next place, see, O judges, what a boundless licence for plundering people of money you will he giving to men. If the man who exacts three denarii is acquitted, some one else will exact four, five, presently ten, or even twenty. What reproof will he meet with? At what degree of injury will the severity of the judge first begin to make a stand? How many denarii will it be that will be quite intolerable? and at what point will the iniquity and dishonesty of the valuation be first arraigned? For it is not the amount, but the description of valuation that will be approved of by you. Nor can you decide in this manner, that it is lawful for a valuation to be made when the price fixed is three denarii, but not lawful when the price fixed is ten; for when a departure is once made from the standard of the market price, and when the affair is once so changed that it is not the advantage of the cultivators which is the rule, but the will of the praetor, then the manner of valuing no longer depends on law and duty, but on the caprice and avarice of men. Wherefore, if in giving your decisions you once pass over the boundary of equity and law, know that you impose on those who come after no limit to dishonesty and avarice in valuing.
