9
and though he knew that the Aquilian law The Lex Aquilia provided for the damages which any one was to pay to the owner, in the case of his having unlawfully killed any slave or quadruped. Actions under this law were limited to damage done by actual contact, though the subject of them was extended afterwards. Vide Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 313, in voc. Damni injuria Actio.about damage existed, still he thought, that, as in the time of our ancestors both men's estates and their desires were less, and as their families, not being very numerous, were restrained by fear of important consequences, it very seldom happened that a man would be killed, and it was thought a nefarious and unprecedented atrocity; and therefore, that there was at that time no need of a system of judicial procedure with reference to bodies of men collected in a violent manner and armed; (for he thought that if any one established a law or a tribunal for matters which were not usual, he seemed not so much to forbid them as to put people in mind of them.)
10
In these times, when after a long civil war our manners had so far degenerated that men used arms with less scruple, he thought it necessary to establish a system of judicial procedure, with reference to the whole of a man's household, in the formula, “Which was said to have been done by the household,” and to assign judges,
