CONCLUSION

What are the consequences of these observations? Those remedies calling for a limited liability on the part of the principal for his dependant’s transactions are difficult, if not impossible, to apply without a sophisticated system of book-keeping and accounting to be used at both levels on a day-to-day basis.

People who were dealing with slaves in business were vulnerable at best. The situation alluded to by Hyperides in his speech Against Athenogenes, written in Athens between 330 and 324 BCE, must have been standard in the classical world. Short of being able to consult the accounts of the perfume shop managed by Midas, Epikrates, blinded by his love, was sold a bunch of slaves and a business crippled with debts. It took only a few weeks for the new owner to measure, from the inside, the extent of his disastrous purchase.

In the Roman world, praetorian law, explained and enlarged by abun­dant juristic opinions, allowed economic actors, including slaves and other dependants, to minimise the risks attached to contractual transactions by granting them legal remedies easy to use because they are resting on a simple question, to be answered by yes or no. These remedies called for total liabil­ity on the part of the principal if his willingness to let his dependant enter into contracts with third parties could be established. The practical useful­ness and commercial feature of the actiones institoria and exercitoria, accesso- rily of the actio tributoria conceived as a lesser evil, may explain the label of superiores actiones adopted by Gaius,^[608] and underlines the lesser importance of those remedies included in triplex hoc edictum: possibly marginal in prac­tice, the actiones de peculio, de in rem verso, or quod iussu retained all along their major legal interest.^[609]

The very existence of legal remedies such as the actiones adiecticiae qualita­tis does not imply that business people resorted to them on an equal, or even regular, basis.

The impracticality of the actio de peculio for reasons stated above and the trend toward simplification, however tentative, started by the - necessarily - later creation of the actio tributoria may have led to the development of the commercial features of the actiones adiecticiae qualitatis, thus bolstering the case for the posteriority of the actiones institoria and exercitoria, a com­munis opinio which I have been trying to disrupt for many years.^[610] However, both Gaius and Ulpian unambiguously speak against it.

The main commercial feature of the actiones tributoria, institoria and exer­citoria (the so-called actiones superiores) lies in the reduction and cancellation of the privileges of the dominus/paterfamilias, who eventually stands on an equal footing with other creditors of the peculium and must accept liability in tributum or in solidum for the debts contracted by his dependants/agents. To echo another Paul, the apostle and author of the Epistle to the Galatians (3:28), it could be said that a ‘world’ economy cannot afford to make a distinction between freeborn and slaves, citizens and foreigners, men and women, adults and minors, Latin and non-Latin speakers.^[611] The actiones institoria and exercitoria celebrate the priority of businesses over individuals.

Lastly, let us stress that the picture we get about the history of the actiones adiecticiae qualitatis, from their creation in the mid or late Republic through the classical period until the time of the compilers, is based less on the reconstruction of the praetorian edict than on the classical jurists’ opinions, mostly in the second and third centuries CE.

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