Attic Nights, Vol. II

...and livestock was named by the magistrates, other oxen and sheep, some of small value and others of greater, were brought forward, and that fact caused an unequal assessment of the fine. For that reason, later by the Aternian Law, ten pieces of bronze were set for each sheep, and one hundred pieces of bronze for each ox. A 'minimal' fine, however, is that of a single sheep. A 'supreme' fine is of that number we have mentioned, beyond which it is not legal to declare a fine per day, and for that reason it is called 'supreme', that is to say, highest and greatest.

Therefore, when even now a fine is pronounced by the magistrates of the Roman people according to the custom of the ancestors, whether minimal or supreme, it is usually observed that sheep are referred to in the masculine gender; and thus M. Varro drafted these legal words, by which a minimal fine would be pronounced: "To M. Terentius, since he was summoned and neither responded nor was excused, I declare a fine against him of one sheep"; and they denied that a fine seemed just unless it was spoken in that gender.

The word 'fine' multa fine itself, however, the same M. Varro in his twenty-first book of Human Affairs says is not Latin, but Sabine, and he says that it remained to his memory in the language of the Samnites, who are descended from the Sabines. But a crowd of modern grammarians have handed down that this word is also said by kat' antiphrasin by way of irony or opposite meaning, just like certain other things. When, however, the usage and custom of speech is such that we speak even now as most of the ancients spoke—'he pronounced a fine' and 'a fine was pronounced'—it is not...