if repayment of the
loan received did not duly take place, the procedure depended on
whether the facts relating to the cause needed to be established,
which was ordinarily the case with actions as to property, or were
already clearly apparent, which in the case of actions as to loans
could easily be accomplished according to the current rules of law
by means of the witnesses. The establishment of the facts assumed
the form of a wager, in which each party made a deposit (-sacramentum-)
against the contingency of his being worsted; in important causes
when the value involved was greater than ten oxen, a deposit of
five oxen, in causes of less amount, a deposit of five sheep. The
judge then decided who had gained the wager, whereupon the deposit
of the losing party fell to the priests for behoof of the public
sacrifices. The party who lost the wager and allowed thirty days
to elapse without giving due satisfaction to his opponent, and the
party whose obligation to pay was established from the first--consequently,
as a rule, the debtor who had got a loan and had not witnesses to
attest its repayment--became liable to proceedings in execution
"by laying on of hands" (-manus iniectio-); the plaintiff seized
him wherever he found him, and brought him to the bar of the judge
simply to satisfy the acknowledged debt. The party seized was not
allowed to defend himself; a third person might indeed intercede for
him and represent this act of violence as unwarranted (-vindex-),
in which case the proceedings were stayed; but such an intercession
rendered the intercessor personally responsible, for which reason
the proletarian could not be intercessor for the tribute-paying
burgess. If neither satisfaction nor intercession took place, the
king adjudged the party seized to his creditor, so that the latter
could lead him away and keep him like a slave. After the expiry
of sixty days during which the debtor had been three times exposed
in the market-place and proclamation had been made to ascertain
whether any one would have compassion upon him, if these steps were
without effect, his creditors had the right to put him to death
and to divide his carcase, or to sell him with his children and his
effects into foreign slavery, or to keep him at home in a slave's
stead; for such an one could not by the Roman law, so long as he
remained within the bounds of the Roman community, become completely
a slave.(6) Thus the Roman community pro