always sat in plural number and that number uneven, they are
probably to be conceived as a court for the cognizance of commercial
dealings, composed of arbiters from both nations and an umpire.
They sat in judgment at the place where the contract was entered
into, and were obliged to have the process terminated at latest
in ten days. The forms, under which the dealings between Romans
and Latins were conducted, were of course the general forms which
regulated the mutual dealings of patricians and plebeians; for
the -mancipatio- and the -nexum- were originally not at all formal
acts, but the significant expression of legal ideas which held a
sway at least as extensive as the range of the Latin language.

Dealings with countries strictly foreign were carried on in a
different fashion and by means of other forms. In very early times
treaties as to commerce and legal redress must have been entered
into with the Caerites and other friendly peoples, and must have
formed the basis of the international private law (-ius gentium-),
which gradually became developed in Rome alongside of the law of
the land. An indication of the formation of such a law is found
in the remarkable -mutuum-, "the exchange" (from -mutare- like
-dividuus-)--a form of loan, which was not based like the -nexum-
upon a binding declaration of the debtor expressly emitted before
witnesses, but upon the mere transit of the money from one hand
to another, and which as evidently originated in dealings with
foreigners as the -nexum- in business dealings at home. It is
accordingly a significant fact that the word reappears in Sicilian
Greek as --moiton--; and with this is to be connected the reappearance
of the Latin -carcer- in the Sicilian --karkaron--. Since it is
philologically certain that both words were originally Latin, their
occurrence in the local dialect of Sicily becomes an important
testimony to the frequency of the dealings of Latin traders in
the island, which led to their borrowing money there and becoming
liable to that imprisonment for debt, which was everywhere in the
earlier systems of law the consequence of the non-repayment of a
loan. Conversely, the name of the Syracusan prison, "stone-quarries"
or --latomiai--, was transferred at an early period to the enlarged
Roman state-prison, the -lautumiae-.

Character of the Roman Law

We have derived our outline of these institutions mainly from
the earliest record of the Roman common