Lex Aquilia
The
lex Aquilia was a Roman law which provided compensation to the owners of property injured by someone's fault.
= The provisions of the Lex Aquilia =
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
tort (or, as the Romans would have it,
delict), albeit with differences from tort as known in modern common law systems. The 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 chapter stated that someone who unlawfully killed another man's
slaves or herd animal (
pecus) should pay the disadvantaged one the highest value that the slave or the beast had over the past year.
Ut qui servum servamve alienum alienamve quadrupedem vel pecudem iniuria occiderit, quanti id in eo anno plurimi fuit, tantum aes dare domino damnas esto. [D. 9.2.2.pr]
If anyone who wrongfully kills another's male or female slave or four-footed herd-animal, let him be ordered to pay the owner whatever its highest value was in the preceding year.
The third chapter concerned the wrongful "burning, breaking or destroying" (
urere, frangere, rumpere) not only of slaves and cattle but also other property:
Ceterarum rerum praeter hominem et pecudem occisos si quis alteri damnum faxit, quod usserit fregerit ruperit iniuria, quanti ea res erit in diebus triginta proximis, tantum aes domino dare damnas esto. [D. 9.2.27.5]
As regards things other than men and cattle which have been killed, if any one does damage to another, and unlawfully burns, breaks, or ruptures something, let him be ordered to pay its owner whatever that thing is worth in the nearest thirty days.
Note that
rumpere (rupture) was generally understood as
corrumpere (spoil), and thus came to encompass a very large number of different sorts of damage.
Although the
Lex Aquilia applied only where damage was unlawfully caused, this requirement was satisfied wherever a person was negligent. It did, however, require at least some minimal degree of positive action.
The statute was in its terms rather narrow. For instance, the first chapter only applied where the killing had taken place directly (
corpori corpore: on the body of the victim by the body of the perpetrator). It gave a remedy only to a citizen. It gave a remedy only to the strict legal owner (
dominus) not to people with lesser rights of ownership. However, actions by analogy to the
lex itself were given which recognised delictal liabilities in cases where the
lex did not apply.
W W Buckland and P G Stein,
A Text-Book of Roman Law. 3rd ed, Cambridge University Press, 1968. (Pages 585-589.)
Digest 9.2
*
Roman Law*
List of Roman laws*
LacusCurtius • Roman Law — Damnum (Smith's Dictionary, 1875), Damnum Injuria Datum section
*
The Roman Law Library, incl. Leges
