Juris civilis initia et progressus. Ad leges XII. Tabularum brevis commentatio. Ex Ulpiani Fragmentorum Tituli XXIX. selectis notis illustrati. Gaii ex veteris jurisprudentiae Fragmentis Institutionu

Law of capital crimes, 38, section 10, Digest, On penalties.

Incendiaries are punished by death; those who set fire within a town out of enmity or for the sake of plunder are usually burned alive; but those who set fire to a hut or a villa are treated somewhat more leniently. But if accidental fires, which could have been avoided, have caused damage to neighbors through the negligence of those where they arose, they are prosecuted civilly, so that the person who suffered the loss may recover the damage.

WHOEVER HAS EXERCISED INCANTATIONS OVER CROPS

Book of Natural Questions 4.

In Seneca, a testimony of this law exists: "Among us," he says, "in the XII Tables, it is cautioned that no one should exercise incantations over the fruits of others." Still-rude antiquity believed that rains could be both attracted and repelled by incantations; that none of this can happen is so clear that for this reason, no philosopher's school needs to be entered.

Plato also makes mention of incantations, by which a remedy might be applied to the bites of vipers and scorpions.

Law 1, Digest, On extraordinary crimes.

Ulpian, however, rejects this kind of medicine: "When someone," he says, "has performed an incantation, when he has prayed, when, to use the common word of impostors, he has exorcised." For these are not kinds of medicine, even if there are those who assert with proclamation that these have been of profit to them.

NOR SHOULD YOU ENTICE ANOTHER'S HARVEST.

Augustine, book 8, On the City of God: "That also," he says, "which he says in another place about these arts:

Virgil, Eclogues 8.

And I have seen the sown harvests being transferred elsewhere:

"Because it is claimed that by this pestiferous and wicked doctrine, the fruits of others are transferred to other lands, does not Cicero record that this was written into the XII Tables, that is, the most ancient laws of the Romans, and a punishment established for him who has done this?" Also