# Institutes of Justinian 1.670-682

Roman Law and Society, Institutes of Justinian, Lines 1.670-1.682. Latin.

Canonical: https://interlinea.aeterna-institute.org/library/latin/roman-law-and-society/institutes-of-justinian/1.670

4. A sale may be made conditionally or unconditionally; conditionally, as, for example, "If Stichus suits you within a certain time, he shall be purchased by you as such a price."
5. A sale is void when a person knowingly purchases a sacred or religious place, or a public place, such as a forum or basilica. If, however, deceived by the vendor, he has supposed that what he was buying was profane or private, as he cannot have what he purchased, he may bring an actio ex empto to recover whatever it would have been worth to him not to have been deceived. It is the same if he has purchased a freeman, supposing him to be a slave.
BOOK IV. OBLIGATIONES ARISING FROM DELICTA .
As we have treated in the preceding book of obligationes arising ex contractu and quasi ex contractu, we have now to treat of obligationes arising ex maleficio. Of the obligationes treated of in the last book, there were, as we have said, four kinds; of those we are now to treat of, there is but one kind, for they all arise from the thing, that is, from the delictum, as, for example, from theft, from robbery, or damage, or injury.
1. Theft is the fraudulent dealing with a thing itself, with its use, or its possession; an act which is prohibited by natural law.
2. The word furtum comes either from furvum, which means "black," because it is committed secretly, and often in the night; or from fraus; or from ferre, that is "taking away," or from the Greek word phor meaning a thief, which again comes from pherin, to carry away.
3. Of theft there are two kinds, theft manifest and theft not manifest; for the thefts termed conceptum and oblatum are rather kinds of actiones attaching to theft than kinds of theft, as will appear below. A manifest theft is one whom the Greek term ep= autophors, being not only, one taken in the fact, but also one taken in the place where the theft is committed; as, for example, before he has passed through the door of the house where he has committed a theft, or in a plantation of olives, or a vineyard where he has been stealing. We must also extend manifest theft to the case of a thief seen or seized by the owner or any one else in a public or private place, while still holding the thing he has stolen, before he has reached the place where he meant to take and deposit it. But if he once reaches his destination, although he is afterwards taken with the thing stolen on him, he is not a manifest thief. What we mean by a not manifest thief may be gathered from what we have said, for a theft which is not a manifest theft is a not manifest theft.

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Roman Law and Society, Institutes of Justinian. Text: The Latin Library (thelatinlibrary.com), used with permission. Changes: HTML markup removed and the text divided into reading sections by Interlinea.
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