companions of the parricide. But this
fanciful execution was simplified in practice. Hodie tamen viv exuruntur
vel ad bestias dantur, (Paul. Sentent. Recept. l. v. tit. xxiv p. 512,
edit. Schulting.)]

[Footnote 176: The first parricide at Rome was L. Ostius, after the
second Punic war, (Plutarch, in Romulo, tom. i. p. 54.) During the
Cimbric, P. Malleolus was guilty of the first matricide, (Liv. Epitom.
l. lxviii.)]

[Footnote 177: Horace talks of the formidine fustis, (l. ii. epist. ii.
154,) but Cicero (de Republica, l. iv. apud Augustin. de Civitat. Dei,
ix. 6, in Fragment. Philosoph. tom. iii. p. 393, edit. Olivet) affirms
that the decemvirs made libels a capital offence: cum perpaucas res
capite sanxisent--perpaucus!]

[Footnote 178: Bynkershoek (Observat. Juris Rom. l. i. c. 1, in Opp.
tom. i. p. 9, 10, 11) labors to prove that the creditors divided not the
body, but the price, of the insolvent debtor. Yet his interpretation is
one perpetual harsh metaphor; nor can he surmount the Roman authorities
of Quintilian, Caecilius, Favonius, and Tertullian. See Aulus Gellius,
Noct. Attic. xxi.]

[Footnote 1781: Hugo (Histoire du Droit Romain, tom. i. p. 234) concurs
with Gibbon See Niebuhr, vol. ii. p. 313.--M.]

In the absence of penal laws, and the insufficiency of civil actions,
the peace and justice of the city were imperfectly maintained by the
private jurisdiction of the citizens. The malefactors who replenish our
jails are the outcasts of society, and the crimes for which they suffer
may be commonly ascribed to ignorance, poverty, and brutal appetite. For
the perpetration of similar enormities, a vile plebeian might claim
and abuse the sacred character of a member of the republic: but, on the
proof or suspicion of guilt, the slave, or the stranger, was nailed to
a cross; and this strict and summary justice might be exercised without
restraint over the greatest part of the populace of Rome.

Each family contained a domestic tribunal, which was not confined, like
that of the praetor, to the cognizance of external actions: virtuous
principles and habits were inculcated by the discipline of education;
and the Roman father was accountable to the state for the manners of
his children, since he disposed, without appeal, of their life, their
liberty, and their inheritance. In some pressing emergencies, the
citizen was authorized to avenge his private or public wrongs. The
consent of the Jewish, the Athenian, and t