King s Peace and English Peace-Magistracy. 13 



suspected that they were in another man's house, he might 

 enter and search that house in a certain specified manner,^ 

 without any search warrant or other authority. If he then 

 and there found the stolen goods, he might proceed as if the 

 thief had been taken flagrante delicto.'' ^ And a similar right 

 of private search was authorized by the Attic law.^ By the 

 legis actio per pignoris capionein, or distress, the creditor, with- 

 out the intervention of an officer, was allowed, in certain speci- 

 fied cases, to distrain his debtor's goods, even in the latter's 

 absence, provided "the distreinor used a set form of words." * 

 Similarly by the legis actio per inanns injectioneni, or arrest, 

 according to a provision of the Twelve Tables, the creditor 

 was his own constable in an execution for debt, and he seized 

 the person and not the property of the debtor. Thus, in the 

 case of a nexal debtor, that is where the obligation was en- 

 gendered by the primitive nexnni or contract per aes et libram, 

 the creditor might seize the delinquent after thirty days grace 

 and cast him into his own prison,^ provided he first took 

 the debtor before the praetor to enable him, if he could, to 

 establish before five witnesses the liberatio nexi or payment 

 of the debt ; and at the end of sixty days the debtor capite 



1 Poste's Gains, III, § 192, p. 445 : Prohibit! actio quadrupli ex edicto Praetoris 

 introducta est. Lex autem eo nomine nuUam poenam constituit : hoc solum prae- 

 cepit, ut qui quaerere velit, nudus quaerat, Hnteo cinctus, lancem habens; qui si 

 quid invenerit, iul^et id lex furtum manifest um esse. " Prevention of search ren- 

 ders liable to fourfold damages, a penalty which the edict of the prtetor first 

 ordained. The Twelve Tables inflicted no penalty for such an offence, but directed 

 that the subsequent searcher must be naked, only wearing a girdle, and carrying 

 a platter in his hands, and made the ensuing discovery of stolen goods a detection 

 of theft in the commission." ^ Hearn, Aryan Household, 441. 



^ . . . " und selbst im dinglichen Rechtsgebiete begegnet sie (Nothwehr) uns 

 noch unmittelbar in der alterthiimlichen Form der Haussuchung, welche derjenige, 

 der entwendetes Gut bei einem Mitbiirger versteckt glaubte, in Person, nur, um 

 seinerseits keinen Verdacht zu erregen, moglichst entkleidet vornehmen musste " : 

 Thalheim, in Hermann's Lehrbiuh der Griechischcn Antiquitdten, II, 112. 



* Poste's Gaius, IV, §§26-29, PP- 510 ff. Cf. Muirhead, Hist. Int. to the 

 Private Law of Rome, 214 ff., 51 ; Rudorff, Roinische Rechtsgeschichte, II, 86-7; 

 Puchta, Institutioiien, I, 479. 



^ On the private gaols of the usurers, see Livy, VI, 36; and Poste's Gaius, 

 p. 508. 



247 



