The rise of the actio iniuriarum

A sum of 25 asses may have been a lot of money around 450 b.c.,^[5454] ^{^[5455] ^[5456] but in the course of the following three centuries the value of the as depreciated so considerably^[5457]’ that the statutory penalty became derisory.}

Who could be so poor, asked Aulus Gellius,^[5458] that 25 asses would discourage him from indulging in the pleasure of injuring another person? And he related^[5459] the story of a man called Lucius Veratius, who amused himself by slapping the faces of people he happened to meet. He was followed by a slave whose task it was to hand over 25 asses to the puzzled victims. This incident precipitated a reform of the law.^[5460] Around the turn of the third to the second century b.c. the praetors introduced an edictum de iniuriis aestumandis,^[5461] according to which courts of recuperatores were instructed to determine a sum that appeared to them to be equitable under the circumstances ("... quantum ob earn rem bonum et aequum recuperatoribus videbitur").^[5462] The edictum de iniuriis aestumandis involved a modernization of both penalty and procedure. A reform of the substantive law soon ensued. Taken merely as an infringement of bodily integrity, the iniuria of the XII Tables was of a rather trifling nature. An important (if not even the main) element inherent in the delict was the humiliation suffered by its victim. The law could thus be seen to provide protection against insults, and it was only natural that the specific manner in which the insult had to be inflicted receded increasingly into the background. In the course of the later Roman Republic the requirement of a physical assault was dropped and protection thus extended to non-physical aspects of the personality.^[5463]-"⁰ Again, it was by way of praetorian intervention that this change occurred.

Four specific edictal promises were introduced, dealing with convicium, adtemptata pudicitia, infamandi causa quid facere and servum alienum verberare. It was primarily the claims arising from these edicts that came to be referred to in classical Roman law by the nornen collectivum actio iniuriarum. Ulpian/Labeo, in a somewhat cryptic passage, allude to a further edict dealing generally with iniuria and making the special edictal promises practically redundant: "Hoc edictum [sc.: ne quid infamandi causa fiat] supervacuum esse Labeo ait, quippe cum ex generali iniuriarum agere possumus."^[5464] ^{^[5465] But whether such an edictum generale ever existed is very doubtful.^[5466] Even if one accepts the text as genuine, it probably merely referred to the actio de iniuriis aestumandis, which may have been considered by the classical Roman lawyers as providing a general basis for the actio iniuriarum.^[5467] But whatever the true position in this matter, the four special edicts were in the forefront of the lawyers' interest and provided the essential substance with which the rather abstract notion of iniuria came to be fleshed out.^[5468] ^{^[5469] We shall therefore briefly have to examine each of them. II.}}

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Source: Zimmermann R.. The Law of Obligations. Roman Foundations of the Civilian Tradition. Juta & Co, Ltd,1992. — 1241 p.. 1992

The rise of the actio iniuriarum

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