ther-in-law may sue on an outrage
committed on his daughterinlaw, if the son to whom she is married is in
his power.

3 Slaves cannot be outraged themselves, but their master may be outraged
in their person, though not by all the acts by which an outrage might be
offered to him in the person of a child or wife, but only by aggravated
assaults or such insulting acts as clearly tend to dishonour the master
himself: for instance, by flogging the slave, for which an action lies;
but for mere verbal abuse of a slave, or for striking him with the fist,
the master cannot sue.

4 If an outrage is committed on a slave owned by two or more persons
jointly, the damages to be paid to these severally should be assessed
with reference not to the shares in which they own him, but to their
rank or position, as it is to the reputation and not to the property
that the injury is done;

5 and if an outrage is committed on a slave belonging to Maevius, but
in whom Titius has a usufruct, the injury is deemed to be done to the
former rather than to the latter.

6 But if the person outraged is a free man who believes himself to be
your slave, you have no action unless the object of the outrage was
to bring you into contempt, though he can sue in his own name. The
principle is the same when another man's slave believes himself to
belong to you; you can sue on an outrage committed on him only when its
object is to bring contempt upon you.

7 The penalty prescribed for outrage in the Twelve Tables was, for a
limb disabled, retaliation, for a bone merely broken a pecuniary mulct
proportionate to the great poverty of the age. The praetors, however,
subsequently allowed the person outraged to put his own estimate on the
wrong, the judge having a discretion to condemn the defendant either in
the sum so named by the plaintiff, or in a less amount; and of these
two kinds of penalties that fixed by the Twelve Tables is now obsolete,
while that introduced by the praetors, which is also called 'honorary,'
is most usual in the actual practice of the courts. Thus the pecuniary
compensation awarded for an outrage rises and falls in amount according
to the rank and character of the plaintiff, and this principle is
not improperly followed even where it is a slave who is outraged; the
penalty where the slave is a steward being different from what it is
when he is an ordinary menial, and different again when he is condemned
to wear fetters.

8 The lex Co