to argue that he was. But they had no other argument, and authority is needed, so they simply cite him as evidence for the proposition that sale and barter are the same. The Proculians who claimed sale and barter were not the same contract countered with another argument from a text of Homer.12 The text as it stands provides no justification. The explanation is that the following words of the Homeric quotation here dropped off 13 “bronze ( αλκ ) for silver.” The Proculians’ argument was that the Sabinians had mistranslated the word αλκ as “money”, whereas the proper translation would be “bronze.” This modern approach is entirely persuasive, but what could the Byzantines have made of the dispute? The phrase “bronze for silver” is omitted from all the manuscripts. Here we have an extreme example for the subject of this book. For the eminently rational idea of making sale and barter one contract the jurists had no authority. But it was needed. So the Sabinians incongruously drafted into service a text of Homer. This was countered by a different text to show that the Sabinians had mistranslated. The last and vital clause of the second quotation dropped off, leaving the argument senseless. But no one seemed to notice or care. If authority had not been needed, a problem would scarcely have existed. In a contract of exchange of goods for goods, both parties could have been treated as having the obligations of sellers. In lecture I give an extreme example of happenstance and the power of the need for authority. If Scottish legal education in the th century not been ineffectual, the American civil war would have occurred at a different time under different leadership with possibly a different outcome. I gave a first version of this lecture at Harvard Law 12 Iliad6.234 f. 13 For the argument see David Daube, ‘The Three Quotations from Homer in Digest 18.1.1.;’ 10 Cambridge Law Journal (1949), pp. 213 ff.
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