# The Institutes of Justinian 1.724-738

Roman Law and Society, The Institutes of Justinian, Lines 1.724-1.738. Latin.

Canonical: https://interlinea.aeterna-institute.org/library/latin/roman-law-and-society/the-institutes-of-justinian/1.724

I II. The Lex Aquilia
The actio damni iniuriae is established by the lex Aquilia, of which the first head provides that if anyone shall have wrongfully killed a slave, or a four-footed beast, being one of those reckoned among cattle belonging to another, he shall be condemned to pay the owner the greatest value which the thing has possessed at any time within a year previous.
1. As the law does not speak generally of four-footed beasts, but only of those which are reckoned among cattle, we may consider its provision as not applying to dogs or wild animals, but only to animals which may be properly said to feed in herds, as horses, mules, asses, sheep, oxen, goats, and also swine, for they are included in the term "cattle," for they feed in herds. Thus Homer says, as Laelius Marcianus quotes in his Institutes:
You will find him seated by his swine,
and they are feeding by the rock of Corax,
near the spring Arethusa.
2. To kill wrongfully is to kill without any right: consequently, a person who kills a thief is not liable to this actio, that is, if he could not otherwise avoid the danger with which he was threatened.
3. Nor is a person made liable by this law who has killed by accident, provided there is no fault on his part, for this law punishes fault as well as wilful wrong-doing.
4. Consequently, if anyone playing or practicing with a javelin pierces with it your slave as he goes by, there is a distinction made; if the accident befalls a soldier while in the camp, or other places appropriated to military exercises, there is no fault in the soldier, but there would be in anyone else besides a soldier, and the soldier himself would be in fault if he inflicted such an injury in any other place than one appropriated to military exercises.

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Roman Law and Society, The 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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