then she dies. I can sue you for the highest value she had in the past year, and this will include the inheritance that I have already received. The obvious response to such a dilemma, especially by jurists such as Julian, Ulpian, Paul and Papinian, who were top civil servants, should be to amend the law by means of an imperial ruling. But such was not their way. They sought instead to keep the law as it was, but to modify it by juristic interpretation.Their reputation as good jurists depended on their skill as jurists, not on reform of the law. They set about this by redefining the meaning of ‘to kill’, occidere. Thus, D. ... ff. (Ulpian, book on the Edict): Thus, “killing” is distinguished at the end of the text from “furnishing a cause of death.” Only “killing” gives rise to anactio legis Aquiliae with damages being the highest value the slave had had in the past year. For “furnishing a cause of death” an action on the facts is given. A fine illustration is in the Institutes of Gaius at G. . . Now we must accept “killing” to include the cases where the assailant hit his victim with a sword or stick or other weapon or did him to death with his hands (if, for example, he strangled him) or kicked him with his foot or butted him or any other such ways. . But if one who is unreasonably overloaded throws down his burden and kills a slave, the Aquilian action lies; for it was within his own judgment not to load himself thus. For even if someone slips and crushes another man’s slave with his load, Pegasus maintains that he is liable under the lex Aquilia provided he overloaded himself unreasonably, or negligently walked through a slippery place. . Thus, if someone does damage through being pushed by somebody else, Proculus writes that neither is liable under the lex; the one who pushed is not liable because he did not kill, nor is the one who was pushed because he did not do the damage unlawfully. It has been decided that there is an action under the statute only where a man has done damage with his own body; consequently actions on the case (actiones in factum) are granted if the damage has been caused in some other way, for example, if one shuts up and starves to death another man’s slave or cattle, or drives his beast so hard that it founders, or if one persuades another’s slave to climb a tree or to go down a well and he falls and is killed or
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