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Julian Law On Agrarian Matters


Gaius Octavius

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I am over awed at what can be found on this site. At the Yale Avalon link:Yale Avalon Project, I found the consequences for moving or over turning a boundry stone, with malice, in this Julian Law:

".... And if the defendant is convicted, he [the judex] shall exact this money from the defendant or from his property at the earliest day possible; and in respect to whatever of this money is received he shall pay a half part to the person through whose especial individual effort the defendant is convicted and he shall pay a half part into the public treasury...."

 

Does this mean that any rogue could tramp around the places covered in the law looking for maliciously over turned boundry stones and bring a suit in law against the culprit? If this is the case, Cicero (chick pea) would become my best friend.

 

The "Charter of Urso, 44 B.C." at that link, is quite enlightening.

 

I don't think that all these Roman laws were chipped in stone or printed on copper, but rather on papyrus. Since Rome was sacked a few times, how did they survive and where were they found?

Edited by Gaius Octavius
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In G.O.

Edited by Faustus
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The edicts are from between 6 and 4 BC actually.

 

Some detail if you have JSTOR access

 

Salve, and thanks PP.

 

That makes total sense. Now that I have your attention I have a related question for you, or anyone who may know where to find this: I was visiting that thread looking for a version of a Roman law regarding the placement and maintenance of boundary markers in the Republic and/or Empire.

 

This was in a thread I stumbled onto a couple of months back. The reason for my interest was because it sounded very familiar as compared to modern but somewhat archaic phraseology used in terms of boundary markers and stones and their placement and maintenance nowadays, as law requires.

 

Faustus

 

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The edicts are from between 6 and 4 BC actually.

 

Some detail if you have JSTOR access

 

 

This was in a thread I stumbled onto a couple of months back. The reason for my interest was because it sounded very familiar as compared to modern but somewhat archaic phraseology used in terms of boundary markers and stones and their placement and maintenance nowadays, as law requires.

 

Faustus

 

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Ooh tricky can't think of much primary source material off the top of my head. There mayu be something in the Lex Agraria of 111 but otherwise the secondary material that may help is Gargola's Lands Laws and Gods or A.Lintotts Judicial Reform and Land Reform in the Romn Republic. Do you know if this law was specifi as to the type of land covered. Could it be something to do with the occupation of Ager Publicus? If so maybe it is in the Lex Licinia.

 

SF

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Hang on a minute I know what ou are talking about! try Dionysius of Halicarnassus 2.74

 

"For, having ordered every one to draw a line around his own land and to place stones on the bounds, he consecrated these stones to Jupiter Terminalis and ordained that all should assemble at the place every year on a fixed day and offer sacrifices to them; and he made the festival in honour of these gods of boundaries among the most dignified of all. 3 This festival the Romans call Terminalia, from the boundaries, and the boundaries themselves, by the change of one letter as compared with our language, they call termines.111 He also enacted that, if any person demolished or displaced these boundary stones he should be looked upon as devoted to the god, to the end that anyone who wished might kill him a sacrilegious person with impunity and without incurring any stain of guilt"

 

It was Numa

 

Was that what you were after?

 

SF

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Don't you think that the law ascribed to Numa (whose reign is super-sketchy) sounds suspiciously similar to the seisichtheia of Solon (for whom we have much more reliable evidence)? BTW, a good book on Solon is "Solon the Thinker" by John Lewis.

 

Yup but that's Dionysius for ya...his account of the law of the Twelve Tables regarding infanticide is also rather familiar for the same reason. I'm not one to decry the eliability of the sources but this guy does eem to have a lot of Greek inspiration for his Antiquities.

 

:ph34r:

SF

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