rustworthy seller
shall himself be responsible; both the agent and the principal shall
be equally liable. If a person wishes to find anything in the house of
another, he shall enter naked, or wearing only a short tunic and without
a girdle, having first taken an oath by the customary Gods that he
expects to find it there; he shall then make his search, and the other
shall throw open his house and allow him to search things both sealed
and unsealed. And if a person will not allow the searcher to make his
search, he who is prevented shall go to law with him, estimating the
value of the goods after which he is searching, and if the other be
convicted he shall pay twice the value of the article. If the master
be absent from home, the dwellers in the house shall let him search the
unsealed property, and on the sealed property the searcher shall set
another seal, and shall appoint any one whom he likes to guard them
during five days; and if the master of the house be absent during a
longer time, he shall take with him the wardens of the city, and so make
his search, opening the sealed property as well as the unsealed, and
then, together with the members of the family and the wardens of the
city, he shall seal them up again as they were before. There shall be
a limit of time in the case of disputed things, and he who has had
possession of them during a certain time shall no longer be liable to be
disturbed. As to houses and lands there can be no dispute in this state
of ours; but if a man has any other possessions which he has used and
openly shown in the city and in the agora and in the temples, and no one
has put in a claim to them, and some one says that he was looking for
them during this time, and the possessor is proved to have made no
concealment, if they have continued for a year, the one having the goods
and the other looking for them, the claim of the seeker shall not be
allowed after the expiration of the year; or if he does not use or show
the lost property in the market or in the city, but only in the country,
and no one offers himself as the owner during five years, at the
expiration of the five years the claim shall be barred for ever after;
or if he uses them in the city but within the house, then the appointed
time of claiming the goods shall be three years, or ten years if he
has them in the country in private. And if he has them in another land,
there shall be no limit of time or prescription, but whenever the