After the previous
ceremony of whipping, he himself was delivered to the flames; and in
this example alone our reason is tempted to applaud the justice of
retaliation. _5._ _Judicial perjury_. The corrupt or malicious witness
was thrown headlong from the Tarpeian rock, to expiate his falsehood,
which was rendered still more fatal by the severity of the penal laws,
and the deficiency of written evidence. _6._ The corruption of a judge,
who accepted bribes to pronounce an iniquitous sentence. _7._ Libels
and satires, whose rude strains sometimes disturbed the peace of
an illiterate city. The author was beaten with clubs, a worthy
chastisement, but it is not certain that he was left to expire under
the blows of the executioner. _8._ The nocturnal mischief of damaging or
destroying a neighbor's corn. The criminal was suspended as a grateful
victim to Ceres. But the sylvan deities were less implacable, and the
extirpation of a more valuable tree was compensated by the moderate fine
of twenty-five pounds of copper. _9._ Magical incantations; which had
power, in the opinion of the Latin shepherds, to exhaust the strength
of an enemy, to extinguish his life, and to remove from their seats
his deep-rooted plantations. The cruelty of the twelve tables against
insolvent debtors still remains to be told; and I shall dare to prefer
the literal sense of antiquity to the specious refinements of modern
criticism. After the judicial proof or confession of the debt, thirty
days of grace were allowed before a Roman was delivered into the power
of his fellow-citizen. In this private prison, twelve ounces of rice
were his daily food; he might be bound with a chain of fifteen pounds
weight; and his misery was thrice exposed in the market place, to
solicit the compassion of his friends and countrymen. At the expiration
of sixty days, the debt was discharged by the loss of liberty or life;
the insolvent debtor was either put to death, or sold in foreign slavery
beyond the Tyber: but, if several creditors were alike obstinate and
unrelenting, they might legally dismember his body, and satiate their
revenge by this horrid partition. The advocates for this savage law have
insisted, that it must strongly operate in deterring idleness and
fraud from contracting debts which they were unable to discharge; but
experience would dissipate this salutary terror, by proving that no
creditor could be found to exact this unprofitable penalty of life or
limb.