Part 4 (2/2)
[51] That is, neither a thief nor a receiver of stolen goods, whether acquired through purchase or by other method, can acquire t.i.tle to property in stolen goods through long possession of such.
[52] The uncia (whence our ”ounce”) is the unit of division of the as and is used also as one-twelfth of anything. One-twelfth of the princ.i.p.al paid yearly as interest equals 8-1/3%.
[53] This originally is a religious penalty, whereby the person is sacrificed. But sacer comes to mean ”a person disgraced and outlawed and deprived of his property.”
[54] At a sale (_mancipium_ or _manc.i.p.atio_) the buyer in the presence of five adult citizens had his money weighed by another adult citizen who held scales for this purpose.
This practice obtained originally ere the introduction of coinage.
[55] That is, enactments referring to a single citizen, whether or not in his favor.
[56] Caput includes also privileges of citizens.h.i.+p (_civitas_).
[57] Commonly known as the _comitia centuriata_, an a.s.sembly which comprised all citizens. To this a.s.sembly a citizen convicted in court on a capital charge had the right of appeal (_ius provocationis_) at least as early as the pa.s.sage of the Lex Valeria in 509 B.C., for Cicero claims that the pontifical as well as the augural books state that the right of appeal from the regal sentences had been recognized (De Re Publica, 11. 31. 54).
[58] This statute is quoted by Cicero (De Legibus, III. 4. 11), who inserts censores (censors) as the subject of the last verb _loca.s.sint_ (have placed). But the last clause must have been ”modernized” either by Cicero or in his source, because the promulgation of the Twelve Tables in 449 B.C. antedated the creation of the censors.h.i.+p, which can not be traced higher than 443 B.C., if we can believe Livy's account of its inst.i.tution (op. cit., IV. 8. 2-7). Before that time the consuls superintended the lists of citizens.
[59] The first provision doubtlessly descends from a primitive tribal tabu. Cicero supposes that the second provision is due to danger from fire (De Legibus, II. 23. 58).
[60] In view of the simplicity enjoined in some of the following statutes of this Table, for the decemvirs apparently took a dim view of extravagant funerals, this statute seems to mean that a rough-hewn pyre without elaborate smoothness of its wooden material suffices for the cremation-couch of a citizen.
[61] Cicero says that some older interpreters suspected that some kind of mourning-garment was meant by _lessus_, but that he inclines to the interpretation that it signifies a sort of sorrowful wailing (De Legibus, II.23.59)
[62] This provision is aimed at the common custom of prolonging mourning by gathering and preserving unburied some part of the corpse.
When this part (_os resectum_) later had been buried, then only mourning ceased. It is possible that some Romans may have thought that cremation might be wrong or that its ceremony was inadequate.
[63] That is, in such a case a limb could be carried to Rome and then buried.
[64] That is, a garland or a chaplet or a wreath as a prize of achievement.
[65] A chattel, for example, is a slave or a horse who wins a wreath for the owner.
[66] Cicero says that this statute seems to suggest fear of disastrous fire (_De Legibus_, II. 24. 61).
[67] In the burning-mound also ashes were buried.
[68] This statute proved so unpopular that it soon was repealed by the Lex Canuleia in 445 B.C.
[69] This process of ”taking a pledge” is the seizure and the detention of a debtor's property or part thereof to induce the debtor to pay the debt before any other legal action will be taken.
It will be noticed that the two instances given in this statute concern Sacred Law, with which by antic.i.p.ation the fourth statute of this Table likewise is concerned. Modern scholars place these two provisions among the Supplementary Laws despite the temptation to set these among the statutes of Table X, of which all but one item come from Cicero's discussion of Sacred Law in his _De Legibus_, II. 23.
58-24. 61, in the concluding portion of which Cicero seems to speak with some finality that he has given all the regulations regarding religion found in the Twelve Tables. Moreover these two rules come from Gaius, who flourished more than two centuries after Cicero. But if every Supplementary Law resembling the subject-matter of Tables I-X should be advanced to the appropriate position forward, few would be the statutes left in Tables XI-XII. It is merely coincidental that some of the statutes among the Supplementary Laws should concern topics already treated, for from the Romans we must not remove the faculty of aftersight.
[70] Some scholars seek to place this provision in Table VIII, where it seems properly to belong, despite its traditional position here.
This dislocation, coupled with that of the preceding provision, well ill.u.s.trates how hopeless is our reconstruction of the order of the regulations of the Twelve Tables.
[71] That is, apparently, if a person with or without fraudulent intent had held and claimed as his a thing which a judicial court now decided belonged to another party.
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