Lex Aquilia

The lex Aquilia was a Roman law which provided compensation to the owners of property injured by someone's fault, set in the 3rd century BC, in the Roman Republic. This law protected Roman citizens from some forms of theft, vandalism, and destruction of property.

The lex Aquilia (strictly, a plebiscite) was possibly enacted in 286 BC, or at some other point in the 3rd century BC. It was concerned with damage done from damnum iniuria datum, "damage unlawfully inflicted", a kind of a delict (or tort), albeit with differences from tort as known in modern common law systems and the Scots Law of Delict. The most pertinent provisions were in the first and third chapters of the law.

Only a limited subset of torts was included in the law as enacted. The first section stated that someone who unlawfully, or wrongfully as it later became known, killed another man's slaves or herd animal (pecus) should pay the owner the highest value that the slave or the beast had over the past year.

According to Gaius's Institutes, the second chapter of the lex covered the following scenario:

It is clear from the Institutes of Justinian that the second chapter was no longer in force by the 5th century AD[I4.3.12]. Additionally, the only other mention which we find of the second chapter within the Digest is the following short extract:

Therefore, it is clear that by the time of the Classical juristic writing the second chapter was legally defunct. The sheer lack of textual commentary implies that this occurrence came about very soon after the formulation of the lex in the Republic, and the quotation from Gaius regarding recovery of fraudulently expunged debts does not seem to rest easily with the extant chapters (dealing which varying degrees of property damage).

The third chapter concerned the wrongful "burning, breaking or rending" (urere, frangere, rumpere) not only of slaves and cattle but also other property:

Note that rumpere (rupture) was generally understood as corrumpere (spoil), and thus came to encompass a very large number of different sorts of damage. Some difficulty surrounds the use of the verb 'fuit', generally taken to indicate the perfect tense. However, an alternative translation of the text suggests that the provision might in fact be prospective. In practice, this would mean that the aggrieved party would be entitled to monetary compensation equal to the diminution in value of the article which suffered damage.

Although the Lex Aquilia applied only where damage was unlawfully caused, this requirement was satisfied wherever a person was neglectful, as well as acting intentionally. It did, however, require direct causation. There was an exception to wrongfulness though. If an act could be proven to be justified (which jurists disagreed when exactly this was) it was not wrongful, such as cases of self-defense.

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