i.i.;? the classical jurist Florentinus lists selt-defense as part of ius juitunile. So tvpicalh' do jurists writing after the Corpus luris Civilis. Not onh’ that, hut there is something wrong with the introduction here aiucurio, "rearing." SureK', whoe\ er is or are responsible for this te.\t knew that many fish, insects, reptiles do not rear their offspring.' And if marriage is so central to natural law what about Bvzantine restrictions on, and penalties for, ditorce.^" d'hese were not applied nor thought applicable (so far as I kiunv) to non-human ereattires. .\lv e.xplanation, which 1 hope will not be regarded as c\ nical, is that here we have further et idence that the draftsmen were just not interested in natural law. Nothing contrart' to the abo\e can be deduced from D. -ro.n.:^! (Llpian ad Sahunim4:^;) As tar as concerns the ci\ il law slaves are regarded as nor e.xisring, not. howe- \ er, in the natural law, because as tar as concerns the natural law all men are equal. I'here is no grandiose moral thought here. As Otto Lenel has shown, the conte.xt ot the te.xt is the Roman anidictio, the action claiming that the defendant ought to return something to the plaintiff, d'he precise context is probablv where a sla\ e paid a "debt he owed" from his peculium (the fund his owner allowed him to use), although he could not legalK be bound because he was not tree. .After manumission he sought to recov^er, but failed because he was under a natural obligation to pav. Of greater interest to us, though, is the beginningof §1. .A standard translation, as we ha\e seen, is "Cu\ il law and the law of nations, howewer, are distinguished in this waw" Fhe Latin auTcm, most reasonabb’ translated as "But," is moved in the translation from its place 6 See, e.g., Buckland, Textbook, pp. iijff. 7 Palingenesia luris Civilis 2 (Leipzig, 1889), p. 1173. 24
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