| INTERDICT
OF THE PRAETOR ON VIOLENCE ( 71 and 53 BC ) |
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( Johnson, Coleman-Norton & Bourne, Ancient Roman Statutes, Austin, 1961, n. 78 and 244 ). |
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| In
two passages of Cicero's early fragmentary oration in defense of his
client Marcus Tullius, who in a countersuit has claimed damages for
assault, because a neighbor with armed slaves had dispossessed him of
his estate, Cicero quotes twice from the praetorian interdict on violence
as it then existed. |
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| Almost
a score of years later Cicero, when writing to Gaius Trebatius Testa,
his young friend and protégé, who became a noted lawyer
in the early Empire, playfully quotes to him an exception in the praetor's
interdict about violence. |
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| LATIN TEXT | ENGLISH TRANSLATION | |
| Nisard, Cic., p. Tull., XII, 29 | ||
| ‘Unde
dolo malo tuo, M. Tulli, M. Claudius aut familia aut procurator eius
vi detrusus est’ ... |
Whence on account of
your malicious deception, Marcus Tullius, Marcus Claudius or his household
or his agent has been dislodged by violence ... |
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| Nisard, Cic., p. Tull., XIX, 44 | ||
| ‘Unde
tu aut familia aut procurator tuus illum aut familiam aut procuratorem
illius in hoc anno vi deiecisti’ ... ‘cum ille possideret’ ... ‘quod
nec vi nec clam nec precario possideret’ ... |
Whence
you or your household or your agent have dispossessed by violence in
this year the person designated or his household or his agent ... when
that person was in possession ... what he was possessing neither by
violence nor secretly nor by precarium ... |
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| Nisard, Cic., ad Fam., VII, 13, 2 | ||
| ‘Quod
tu prior vi hominibus armatis non veneris’ ... |
Because
you have come previously to dispossess your opponent through violence
and by armed persons ... |
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| Lenel, Das Edictum perpetuum, 3rd ed., n. 245 b | ||
‘Unde
tu illum vi hominibus coactis armatisve deiecisti aut familia tua deiecit,
eo illum quaeque ille tunc ibi habuit restituas’ |
Whence you
have ejected a designated person by violence, with men collected or
armed, or your dependents have ejected, thither you shall restore the
designated person and whatever the designated person then had there. |
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