Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights
John C. Rolfe, Ed.

---

[p. 419] strewn with robes, and in it men who were too ill or old used to be carried lying down. What cruelty then does there seem to you to be in deciding that a waggon ought to be furnished for a poor or needy man who was called into court, if haply through lameness or some other mischance he was unable to walk; and in not requiring that ' a closed carriage' be luxuriously strewn, ¹ when a conveyance of any kind was sufficient for the invalid? And they made that decision, in order that the excuse of a diseased body might not give perpetual immunity to those who neglected their obligations and put off suits at law; but foolishly.

"They assessed inflicted injuries at twenty-five asses. They did not, my dear Favorinus, by any means compensate all injuries by that trifling sum, although even that small number of asses meant a heavy weight of copper; for the as which the people then used weighed a pound. But more cruel injuries, such as breaking a bone, inflicted not only on freemen but even on slaves, they punished with a heavier fine, ² and for some injuries they even prescribed retaliation. This very law of retaliation, my dear sir, you criticized somewhat unfairly, saying with facetious captiousness that it was impossible to carry it out, since injury and retaliation could not be exactly alike, and because it was not easy to break a limb in such a way as to be an exact aequilibrium, or 'balance,' as you put it, of the breaking of the other man's. It is true, my dear Favorinus, that to make exact retaliation is very difficult. But the Ten, wishing by retaliation to diminish and abolish such violence as beating and injuring, thought that men ought to be restrained