In truth, O judges, the magistrates are not influenced by the extent or the
 damage, to assign a trial in this formula. For if it were the case, the magistrates would not
 give recuperators rather than a judex, We are not acquainted with the
 difference between the judex and the recuperatores . Vide Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 529, v.
 Judex in init. —not an action against the
 whole family, but against the one who was proceeded against by name; nor would the damages be
 estimated at fourfold, but at double; and to the word “damage” would be
 added the word “wrongfully.” Nor, indeed, does the magistrate who has
 assigned this trial depart from the provisions of the Aquilian law about other damage, in
 cases in which nothing is at issue except the damage. And to this point the praetor ought to
 turn his attention. In this trial, you see the question is about violence; you see the question is about armed
 men; you see that the demolition of houses, the ravaging of lands, the murders of men, fire,
 plunder, and massacre are brought before the court. And do you wonder that those who assigned
 this trial thought it sufficient that it should be inquired whether these cruel, and
 scandalous, and atrocious actions had been done or not; not whether they had been done rightly
 or wrongfully? The praetors, then, have not departed from the Aquilian law which was passed
 about damage; but they appointed a very severe course of proceeding in the case of armed men
 acting with violence. Not that they thought that no inquiry was ever to be made as to the
 right or the wrong; but they did not think it fit that they who preferred to manage their
 business by arms rather than by law should argue the question of right and wrong. Nor did they refuse to add the word “wrongfully”
 because they would not add it in other cases; but they did not think that it was possible for
 slaves to take arms and collect a band rightfully. Nor did they refuse because they thought,
 that if this addition were made, it would be possible to persuade such men as these judges
 that it had not been wrongfully done, but because they would not appear to put a shield in the
 hands of those men in a court of justice, whom they had summoned before the court for talking
 those arms which they did take. 
 The same prohibitory law about violence existed in the time of our ancestors which exists
 now. “From which you, or your household, or your agent have this year driven him, or
 his household, or his agent, by violence.” Then there is added, with reference to
 the man who is being proceeded against, “When he was the owner;” and this
 further addition also, “Of what he possessed, having acquired it neither by
 violence, nor secretly, nor as a present.” The man
 who is said to have driven another away by violence has many pleas of defence allowed him,
 (and if he can prove any one of them to the satisfaction of the judge, then, even if he
 confesses that he drove him out by violence, he must gain his cause,) either that he who has
 been driven out was not the owner, or that he had got possession from him himself by violence,
 or by stealth, or as a present. Our ancestors left so many pleas of defence, by which he might
 gain his cause, even to the man who confessed himself guilty of violence.