Kitap 20
1
Don't ask me, said Favorinus, what I think. For you know that, according to the practice of the sect to which I belong, He probably refers to the Pyrronian sceptics, about whose beliefs he wrote a work in ten books; see xi. 5. 5. I am accustomed rather to inquire than to decide. But the Roman people is a judge neither insignificant nor contemptible, and while they thought that such crimes ought to be punished, they yet believed that punishments of that kind were too severe; for they have allowed the laws which prescribed such excessive penalties to die out from disuse and old age. Just so they considered it also an inhuman provision, that if a man has been summoned to court, and being disabled through illness or years is too weak to walk, 'a covered waggon he need not spread'; That is, with a pallet for lying upon. but the man is carried out and placed upon a beast of burden and conveyed from his home to the praetor At that time one of the two chief magistrates, corresponding to the consuls of later times. in the comitium, as if he were a living corpse. For why should one who is a prey to illness, and unable to appear, be haled into court at the demand of his adversary, clinging to a draught animal? But as for my statement that some laws were excessively lenient, do not you yourself think that law too lax, which reads as follows with regard to the penalty for an injury: viii. 4. 'If anyone has inflicted an injury upon another, let him be fined twenty-five asses'? For who will be found so poor that twenty-five asses would keep him from inflicting an injury if he desired to? And therefore your friend Labeo also, in the work which he wrote On the Twelve Tables, Frag. 25, Hushke; 3, Bremer. expressing his disapproval of that law, says: There seems to be a lacuna in the text; see crit. note. One Lucius Veratius was an exceedingly wicked man and of cruel brutality. He used to amuse himself by striking free men in the face with his open hand. A slave followed him with a purse full of asses; as often as he had buffeted anyone, he ordered twenty-five asses to be counted out at once, according to the provision of the Twelve Tables' Therefore, he continued, the praetors afterwards decided that this law was obsolete and invalid and declared that they would appoint arbiters to appraise damages. Again, some things in those laws obviously cannot, as 1 have said, even be carried out; for instance, the one referring to retaliation, which reads as follows, if my memory is correct: 'If one has broken another's limb, there shall be retaliation, unless a compromise be made.' Now not to mention the cruelty of the vengeance, the exaction even of a just retaliation is impossible. For if one whose limb has been broken by another wishes to retaliate by breaking a limb of has injurer, can he succeed, pray, in breaking the limb in exactly the same manner? In this case there first arises this insoluble difficulty. What about one who has broken another's limb unintentionally? For what has been done unintentionally ought to be retaliated unintentionally. For a chance blow and an intentional one do not fall under the same category of retaliation. How then will it be possible to imitate unintentional action, when in retaliating one has not the right of intention, but of unintention? But if he break it intentionally, the offender will certainly not allow himself to be injured more deeply or more severely; but by what weight and measure this can be avoided, I do not understand. Nay more, if retaliation is taken to a greater extent or differently, it will be a matter of absurd cruelty that a counter-action for retaliation should arise and an endless interchange of retaliation take place. But that enormity of cutting and dividing a man's body, if an individual is brought to trial for debt and adjudged to several creditors, The law reads: fertiis nundinis partis secanto. Si plus minusve secuerunt, se fraude esto, on the third market day (i.e. after about two weeks; see note on § 49, below) let them cut him into pieces. If they have cut more or less (than their proper share), let it be without prejudice (to them). I do not care to remember, and I am ashamed to mention it. For what can seem more savage, what more inconsistent with humanity, than for the limbs of a poor debtor to be barbarously butchered and sold, just as to-day his goods are divided and sold?
