[9]
and though he
knew that the Aquilian law 1about damage existed, still he thought, that, as in the time of our
ancestors both men's estates and their desires were less, and as their families, not being
very numerous, were restrained by fear of important consequences, it very seldom happened that
a man would be killed, and it was thought a nefarious and unprecedented atrocity; and
therefore, that there was at that time no need of a system of judicial procedure with
reference to bodies of men collected in a violent manner and armed; (for he thought that if
any one established a law or a tribunal for matters which were not usual, he seemed not so
much to forbid them as to put people in mind of them.)
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1 The Lex Aquilia provided for the damages which any one was to pay to the owner, in the case of his having unlawfully killed any slave or quadruped. Actions under this law were limited to damage done by actual contact, though the subject of them was extended afterwards. Vide Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 313, in voc. Damni injuria Actio.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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