14 George E. Hozvard, 



poenas dabat — paid the forfeit with his life or was sold into 

 slavery.^ The law respecting a judgment debtor was the 

 same, unless a vindcx appeared to challenge the validity of the 

 judgment. The court declared the right, but exiaected the 

 plaintiff, under her sanction, to arrest the debtor in execution 

 of her decree.^ The right of the creditor to imprison his 

 nexal debtor, often exercised with great cruelty, seems to 

 have survived until the enactment of the lex Poetilia Papiria, ^ 

 about the year 428 u.c. On the other hand, the judgment 

 debtor was liable to private arrest and private imprisonment 

 until the first century before the Christian era ; and execution 

 against his person was still possible in the age of Justinian, 

 though execution against his estate had long since become 

 the general rule.^ Moreover, as late as a.d. 389, a person 

 who believed himself to be the owner of lands or other prop- 

 erty, might, with virtual impunity, forcibly dispossess the 

 holder. In that year it was interdicted under severe penalty 

 by an imperial constitution ; ^ and thus a final blow was struck 

 " by the Roman legislator at the archaic form of remedial 

 procedure — private violence or self-redress." ^ 



But already a new race was taking possession of the Roman 



1 The provisions of the Twelve Tables are preserved by Aulus Gellius, A^oct. 

 An., XX, I, §§ 41 ff. The best discussion of the 7nanus injeciio is given by Muir- 

 head, Hist. Int., 157-S, 201-17, whom I have here followed. His searching 

 criticism goes to show that the passage in the Twelve Tables relates to nexal as 

 well 2£, judgment debtors. Cf. also on the mattus injectio and personal execution, 

 Puchta, Institutionen, I, 550 ff.; Rudorff, Romische Rechtsgeschichte, I, 105, II, 

 85; Hearn, Aryan Household, 445-6; Maine, Early Histoiy of Institutions, 257. 



2 Gains, IV, § 21 : " The procedure was as follows : the plaintiff said, ' whereas 

 you have been adjudged or condemned to pay me ten thousand sesterces which 

 you fraudulently have failed to pay, therefore I arrest you as judgment debtor for 

 ten thousand sesterces,' and at the same time laid hands on him; and the debtor 

 was not allowed to resist the arrest, or defend himself in his own person, but gave 

 a vindex to advocate his cause, or, in default, was taken prisoner to the plaintiffs 

 house, and put in chains " : Poste, p. 506. 



'^ Poste's Gains, p. 348. Cf. Muirhead, Hist. Int., 53, 160-1. 



* Cf. Muirhead, Hist. Int., 96, 160-1, 212, notes ; Hearn, Aryan Household, 

 446; Hunter, Roman Law, 875; Poste's Gaius, p. 348. 



^ By a constitution of the emperors Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius : 

 Cod. 8, 4, 7. Cf. Poste's Gaius, p. 465. " Poste's Gaius, p. 466. 



248 



