The Struggle for Law
restitution of the object, the second a penalty in addition to this, sometimes a fine, sometimes disgrace; and this proportionate infliction of a penalty is one of the soundest thoughts of the intermediate Roman law. That a depositary who had become guilty of the breach of trust of denying the deposit or refusing to restore it to the depositor, that the agent or guardian who had used his position of trust to promote his own interests, or who had knowingly neglected his duty, should escape by merely restoring the thing or by making good the damage caused, was something to which the healthy feeling of legal right of the Romans could not reconcile itself. It demanded, besides this, the infliction of a penalty for the wrong done, as a satisfaction of the wounded feeling of legal right and as a means of deterring others from similar misdeeds. The penalties inflicted were, in the first place, infamy—in Rome one of the severest imaginable, for it entailed, besides the social degradation which it produced, the loss of all political rights, political death.
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