dirchos or become tangled in brambles. When 1 see ^'onr sheep in distress, 1 rescue them. On one occasion when I rescued an old ewe of \()urs of little \ alue, my e\pensi\ e clothing was ruined. What can 1 reco\ er at law.- Only up to the value of the ewe! d'he pre\ i(His occasions when I sa\ ed you much money are excluded. I'hese three straightforward examples are selected because the\' illustrate the issue \ i\ idly. The forms of procedure accepted at Rome were \er\’ important for the detelopment of sharph' contoured legal rules and institutions. .\nd such sharp contours ha\e \alue. rhe\' also result in relati\elv simple law. But they are bought at a price. Law becomes more removed fromsociety. Beginnings ha\ e an impact that could not be foreseen. for another example of unforeseen consequences 1 want to discuss abo\e all the great success story of maticipatio, the formal mode of transferring those important things designated as res miuicipi. Its form for the classical period is described b\' (iaius in his Institutes, 1.119: Now maneipatia is, as we said abo\e, a sort ot iniagiiiar\ sale, and it, too, is peeuliar to Roman citizens. It is performed thus: not fewer than f'n e w itnesses w ho are Roman citizens aho\ e piihert\' plus one other who holds a hronze scale and is called a lihripens, are summmied and hrought together, and the person who takes Iw the miincipatio, holding the hronze, speaks thus: "I declare this man is mine hv the law of the citizens, and let him ha\ e been bought h\ me h\ this hronze and this hronze scale." I hen he strikes the scale w ith the hronze and gives the hronze, as if in the place of the price, to the jierson from w horn he is recei\ ing in mamipatio. In G'.i.izi, CjiiiiLs tells us that the object to be mancipated must be present, unless it is land, which is regularly mancipated at a distance. I'he ceremony, whose antiquity is well attested, ob\ iousK' derix es from an actual sale before the time of coined monew, when copper or bronze as the price was actually weighed on the scale. Which 64
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