normal dress, but only in the presence of witnesses.  If in the latter case stolen goods were discovered, the thief on conviction was condemned to pay thrice their value for furtum conceptum (detected theft).  But in either case, if the accused householder could prove that a person other than himself for any reason had placed the stolen articles in his house, he could obtain from that person on conviction damages of thrice their value for furtum oblatum ("planted” theft).  Search by platter and loincloth (lanx et licium) became obsolete; search with witnesses present survived.

[50] The ancient commentators take this statute to mean “double in kind” not in value:  for example, two cows surrendered for one cow stolen.

[51] That is, neither a thief nor a receiver of stolen goods, whether acquired through purchase or by other method, can acquire title 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 principal 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 mancipatio) 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 citizenship (civitas).

[57] Commonly known as the comitia centuriata, an assembly which comprised all citizens.  To this assembly a citizen convicted in court on a capital charge had the right of appeal (ius provocationis) at least as early as the passage 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 locassint (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 censorship, which can not be traced higher than 443 B.C., if we can believe Livy’s account of its institution (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.