The term obligation (obligatio) denoted the legal relationship that existed between two persons, in terms of which one person was obliged towards the other to carry out a certain duty or duties.

Obligation may otherwise be defined as a bond recognized by the law (iuris vinculum) in terms of which one party, the creditor (creditor), had a personal right (ius in personam) against the other party, the debtor (debitor).

It is important to emphasize that the person who bound himself to another as a debtor placed an obligation on only himself and thereby gave the creditor a right against himself, while third parties did not become involved. If the obligation was not properly discharged, the creditor could institute a personal action (actio in personam) against that particular debtor with a view to obtaining a judgment that could be executed against such debtor. With this personal action the creditor claimed that the debtor had to perform something for the creditor, i.e. give something to the creditor, do something for him or refrain from doing something.^{^[572]}

The concept of obligation underwent a long process of evolution over a span of several centuries. In the earliest phase of Roman history, the obligation was regarded as a form of personal bondage in accordance with which a person was subject to the physical control of another. This would occur, for instance, where a person had committed a wrongful deed against another and the injured party was granted compensation by being given physical control over the wrongdoer. The latter was then exposed to the revenge of his victim and, originally, he could be slain or sold across the Tiber river (trans Tiberim) into slavery. As Roman society evolved, the physical subjection of the wrongdoer to the control of the victim was gradually superseded by the talio principle: the notion that the revenge exacted on the perpetrator should not be more severe than the injury caused by him. From an early stage it was recognized, however, that the exercise of revenge could be redeemed or bought off: the injured party could accept an amount of redemption from the malefactor and, in return, waive his right to exact revenge. Out of this practice evolved the ideas of compensation or damages and penalty.

In the course of time, the notion of revenge gradually faded away and was replaced by that of a personal bondage or liability from which the perpetrator could release himself by payment of a sum of money. Even since the time of the Law of the Twelve Tables, fixed penalties were prescribed for certain wrongful acts. By the close of the republican age it was recognized that the wrongdoer could not only be released from his bondage if he opted to pay an amount of redemption, but was in fact compelled to release himself in this manner. Thus, the duty to perform as the counterpart of a right to performance became established. Bondage or liability as such then came to the fore principally in cases of malperformance, i.e., where a debtor had not complied with his obligation or had not carried it out properly. This pertained primarily to contracts, but the same idea prevailed in the case of delicts with respect to which it was held that the wrongdoer was liable to a penalty or some form of compensation.

Originally, only a limited number of legal acts engendered obligations: certain lawful acts such as nexum, with respect to which a person bound himself formally^{^[573]}; and delicts such as theft (furtum) and unlawful assault (iniuria). In the course of time, the Roman law of obligations recognized an increasing number of both lawful and unlawful acts as potential sources of obligations.

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Source: Mousourakis G.. Fundamentals of Roman Private Law. Springer, 2012.— 366 p.. 2012

The term obligation (obligatio) denoted the legal relationship that existed between two persons, in terms of which one person was obliged towards the other to carry out a certain duty or duties.

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