Injuries

In cases of damage (-iniuria-) to person or to property, where the injury was not of a very serious description, the aggrieved party was probably obliged unconditionally to accept compensation; if, on the other hand, any member was lost in consequence of it, the maimed person could demand eye for eye and tooth for tooth.

Property

Since the arable land among the Romans was long cultivated upon the system of joint possession and was not distributed until a comparatively late age, the idea of property was primarily associated not with immoveable estate, but with “estate in slaves and cattle” (-familia pecuniaque-).  It was not the right of the stronger that was regarded as the foundation of a title to it; on the contrary, all property was considered as conferred by the community upon the individual burgess for his exclusive possession and use; and therefore it was only the burgess, and such as the community accounted in this respect as equal to burgesses, that were capable of holding property.  All property passed freely from hand to hand.  The Roman law made no substantial distinction between moveable and immoveable estate (from the time that the latter was regarded as private property at all), and recognized no absolute vested interest of children or other relatives in the paternal or family property.  Nevertheless it was not in the power of the father arbitrarily to deprive his children of their right of inheritance, because he could neither dissolve the paternal power nor execute a testament except with consent of the whole community, which might be, and certainly under such circumstances often was, refused.  In his lifetime no doubt the father might make dispositions disadvantageous to his children; for the law was sparing of personal restrictions on the proprietor and allowed, upon the whole, every grown-up man freely to dispose of his property.  The regulation, however, under which he who alienated his hereditary property and deprived his children of it was placed by order of the magistrate under guardianship like a lunatic, was probably as ancient as the period when the arable land was first divided and thereby private property generally acquired greater importance for the commonwealth.  In this way the two antagonistic principles—­the unlimited right of the owner to dispose of his own, and the preservation of the family property unbroken—­were as far as possible harmonized in the Roman law.  Permanent restrictions on property were in no case allowed, with the exception of servitudes such as those indispensable in husbandry.  Heritable leases and ground-rents charged upon property could not legally exist.  The law as little recognized mortgaging; but the same purpose was served by the immediate delivery of the property in pledge to the creditor as if he were its purchaser, who thereupon gave his word of honour (-fiducia-) that he would not alienate the object pledged until the payment fell due, and would restore it to his debtor when the sum advanced had been repaid.