Table VIII: Torts or Delicts

If any person has sung or composed against another, he shall be clubbed to death.
If a person has maimed another's limb, let there be retaliation in kind unless he makes agreement for settlement with him.
If he has done simple harm [to another], penalties shall be 25 as pieces.
If a four-footed animal shall be said to ahve caused loss, legal action... shall be either the surrender of the thing which damaged, or else the offer of assessment for the damage.
For pasturing on, or cutting secretly by night, another's crops acquired by tillage, there shall be capital punishment in the case of an adult malefactor... he shall be hanged and put to death as a sacrifice to Ceres. In the case of a person under the age of puberty, at the discretion of the praetor either he shall be scourged or settlement shall be made for the harm done by paying double damages.
Any person who destroys by burning any building or heap of corn deposited alongside a house shall be bound, scourged, and put to death by burning at the stake, provided that he has committed the said misdeed with malice aforethought; but if he shall have committed it by accident, that is, by negligence, it is ordained that he repair the damage, or, if he be too poor to be competent for such punishment, he shall receive a ligher chastisement.
Any person who has cut down another person's trees with harmful intent shall pay 25 as pieces for every tree.
If theft has been done by night, if the owner kill the thief, the thief shall be held lawfully killed.
It is forbidden that a theif be killed by day... unless he defend himself with a weapon; even though he has come with a weapon, unless he use his weapon and fight back, you shall not kill him. And even if he resists, first call out.
In the case of all other thieves caught in the act, if they are freemen, they should be flogged and adjudged to the person against whom the theft has been committed, provided that the malefactors have committed it by day and have not defended themselves with a weapon; slaves caught in the act of theft should be flogged and thrown from the Rock; ¹⁴ boys under the age of puberty should, at the praetor's discretion, be flogged, and the damage done by them should be repaired.
If a person pleads on a case of theft in which the thief has not been caught in the act, the thief must compound for the loss by paying double damages.
A stolen thing is debarred from usucapio.
No person shall practice usury at a rate more than one twelfth...¹⁵ A usurer is condemned for quadruple amount.
Arising out of a case concerning an article deposited... action for double damages.
Guardians and trustees... the right to accuse on suspicion... action...against guardians for double damages.
If a patron shall have defrauded his client, he must be solemnly forfeited.¹⁶
Whoseoever shall have allowed himself to be called scales-balancer [see note ¹²] if he do not as witness pronounce his testimony, he must be deemed dishonored and incapable of acting as witness.
Penalty... for false witness... a person who has been found guilty of giving false witness shall be hurled down from the Tarpeian Rock....
No person shall hold meetings by night in the city.
Members [of associations]... are granted... the right to pass any binding rule they like for themselves provided that they cause no violation of public law.

¹⁴The tarpeian Rock on the Capitoline Hill, commonly used as a place of execution in Rome.
¹⁵The first reference to interest rates at Rome. Unciarium foenus was probably 8.33 percent, possibly to 10 percent, per annum.
¹⁶The man thus judged sacer was placed outside human law by being dedicated to a divinity for destruction. The original death by sacrifice was later transformed into outlawry and confiscation of property.