Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2025
Chapter 6 considers how the legal system dealt with theft, damage to property, personal insult, and violence, and how citizens obtained redress. The law of obligations is important since, for example, theft, the most common action that modern law defines under criminal law, was under Roman law a delict, prosecuted through action taken by the injured party on the basis of an obligation on the wrongdoer to make restitution. Therefore, the Romans distinguished between a delict and a crimen, which was punished by public penalty after formal trial. In the legal definition of unlawful killing, injury, outrage, and loss, concepts of negligence, deceit, and causation emerged in assessing responsibility. We then consider the definition of theft and robbery, the remedies available for plaintiffs, and the main criminal offences tried in the public jury courts. Those who did not conform with the religious establishment and social conventions, for example, magicians, Jews, and Christians, faced pursuit and prosecution.
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