Fragmentum Atestinum ( English translation )

FRAGMENT FROM ESTE ON JUDICIAL COMPETENCE IN CISALPINE GAUL

( 67 or 49 BC )

( Johnson, Coleman-Norton & Bourne, Ancient Roman Statutes, Austin, 1961, pp. 89-90, n. 103 ).

   The date of this fragmentary law, which takes its name, Fragmentum Atestinum, from its discovery in 1880 at Este, the ancient Ateste, in the Venetian district of Italy, is as uncertain as is this law's connection with the Rubrian Law on Cisalpine Gaul.
   The aim of the law was to effect certain alterations in the competence of local magistrates, after Roman citizenship had been granted to communities in Cisalpine Gaul. In some cases, it seems that where a plaintiff's claim was assessed at less than 10,000 sesterces a defendant could carry his case to a local magistrate vested with jurisdiction in either a municipality or a colony or a prefecture.
   We learn also that the judicial competence of such a magistrate could be based either on a treaty with Rome or on an enactment of a Roman assembly or on a decree of the Senate or on the traditional custom of the community concerned. This law also confirmed the validity of decisions delivered by such magistrates before the passage of the Rubrian Law and forbade an appeal from them to Rome.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION.

1) After the passage of this law, whoever in any town, municipality, colony, prefecture, market, village, meeting place, fortress, or territory of those which are in Cisalpine Gaul is brought into court before a duumvir, a quattuorvir, or a prefect concerning trusteeship, partnership, agency, or guardianship, in his own name or because he himself is charged with having committed a violation of any of these relations, or because he is sued for theft, which is alleged to pertain to a freeman or a freewoman, or for injuries : if the person from whom the claim is sought or with whom the suit is argued wishes to contest on this charge before a court in such a municipality, colony, or prefecture, and if this indictment is for 10,000 sesterces or less : it is not the intent of this law that a judex or an arbiter shall not be assigned there or granted for a trial of this charge or that a trial shall not be held there concerning this charge, in such a manner as it will be proper for a trial to be held and to be conducted on those charges for which trials are granted in accordance with this law.
2) In respect to any matter that is argued between private persons in any municipality, colony, or prefecture, and in respect to how great was the matter or the money involved, and in respect to which the exercise of jurisdiction or the grant or the assignment of a judex, an arbiter, or recuperators was the duty of a duumvir or of a person who there had jurisdiction by a law, a treaty, or a plebiscite, or a decree of the Senate, or custom, before that law or plebiscite, which Lucius Roscius proposed to the people or to the plebs on March II : it is not the intent of this law that in respect to this matter or money an appeal to Rome may be the right of a private person or that whoever there has jurisdiction may not exercise jurisdiction or grant a judex or an arbiter concerning this matter, as before that law or plebiscite which Lucius Roscius proposed to the people or to the plebs on March II it was proper for a duumvir or a person who there has jurisdiction to exercise jurisdiction or to grant a judex or an arbiter.