§ 1. Justice is the bond of the commonwealth; the prince’s labor and prudence must serve it. For this is the cause for which princes are constituted, and when they have overthrown it, they are cast out. The Greeks say that it is more beautiful than the morning star. Justice is twofold: universal justice, which is also called perfect, concerning which there is an ancient saying:
Ἐν δὲ δικαιοσύνῃ συλλήβδην πᾶσ᾽ ἀρετή ᾽στιν.
In justice, in sum, is every virtue. This justice ought to shine in the prince as in the jewel of the whole province, and in the senate as in a girdle that encircles the world and measures seasons and labors in a fixed succession. For the whole world confirms by its testimony the saying of Bias: “Magistracy reveals the man.” This justice is not a part of virtue, but the whole of virtue; and injustice is not a part of viciousness, but the whole of viciousness. This injustice is ἀνομία, or iniquity. There is another justice, which they call particular and which is properly ἰσότης, or equality. It is defined as that which renders to each his own right. More suitably for my purpose, the jurists say: “Justice is the constant and perpetual will to render to each his own right.” For it signifies a habit and inclination of the mind.
There are two kinds of this justice. It is occupied either in distributing public advantages and burdens, or in contracts, such as purchases, sales, exchanges, and agreements. In the former kind it does not maintain the equality that exists in the latter, but employs analogy or proportion, which they call geometrical, by which equal things are apportioned to equals and unequal things to unequals from the goods and burdens of the commonwealth. It apportions a greater stipend to the tribune than to the centurion, and to the centurion than to the decarch or soldier; for as dignity is compared with dignity, so stipend is compared with stipend. There is a similar distribution in civil affairs; for the measure of tribute or the necessity of military service is greater for the rich and noble, but that must be counterbalanced by prerogatives of honor and advantage. But because desire violates equality in all these things, it must be restored by laws and judgments, and, when their force is broken, by sword, punishments, and wars.
§ 2. The prince sits as arbiter of so great a good, bringing all unequal things down to a level by his nod and equating all things according to their proportions. Nor is there another origin of principate; for when the weaker saw that they were oppressed, they transferred all their right and strength to one more powerful man by whom they might be defended.
Therefore let the prince, the optimates, and whoever has been raised on high by whatever hand or fortune render to each his own, not claim what belongs to another, neglect private advantage, and guard common equity. For thus the Milanese Doctor, who presided not as a judge but as a bishop, admonishes.
You are a priest of right, whoever you are who govern the commonwealth in any part. I exhort you to exhibit in yourself what the panegyric praises in Theodosius: “You are the same man you were, and only as much is lawful to you through yourself as was lawful before through the laws. You experience supreme right in the faculty and abundant opportunity of benefiting, not in security for sinning.”
§ 3. God is the beginning of justice so salutary and so necessary. Its beauty is infinite, because it contains the whole order of the commonwealth, since it is a virtue, as Aristotle says, toward another. For the oppressed flee to the prince’s justice as to a most sacred altar, as Archytas used to say, so that the sanctity of justice may protect those whom neither common nature, nor strength, nor prayers defend from injury. It was honored formerly, for it is the mistress and queen of the virtues, the empress even of kings. They say that it was the custom among the Egyptians that, when diplomas had been given throughout the kingdoms, they commanded the governors of cities to resist without hesitation if the kings commanded anything unjust. For they judged that no one was harmed when justice was observed.
Ambrose, both in the tribunal and at the altar a wise and distinguished priest of justice, says in book 1 of On Duties: “Great is the splendor of justice, which, born for others rather than itself, assists our community and society and holds an exalted place, so that it has all things subjected to its judgment.” And the disciple of Ambrose, greater than his master, says on Psalm 64: “Your temple is holy, wonderful in justice. These are the goods of his house. He did not say, ‘Your holy temple is wonderful in columns, wonderful in marbles, wonderful in gilded ceilings,’ but ‘wonderful in justice.’ You have eyes outwardly with which to see marble and gold; inwardly is the eye with which the beauty of justice may be seen. Inwardly, I say, will be the eye with which the beauty of justice may be seen.
“If there is no beauty of justice, whence is a just old man loved? What does he bear in his body that delights the eyes? Bent limbs, a wrinkled brow, a head made white with gray hairs, and weakness on every side full of complaints. But perhaps because this decrepit old man does not delight your eyes, he delights your ears. With what utterances? With what song? Even if perhaps he sang well as a young man, all things have failed with age. Or perhaps the sound of his words delights your ears, though with fallen teeth he scarcely fully pronounces words? Yet if he is just, if he does not covet what belongs to another, if from what he possesses he gives to the needy, if he admonishes well and thinks rightly, if he believes with integrity, if he is prepared to expend even his broken limbs for the faith of truth—for many martyrs were also old—from what source do we love him? What good do we see in him with the eyes of flesh? Nothing.
“There is, therefore, a certain beauty of justice which we see with the eyes of the heart, and love, and for which we burn. How greatly human beings loved it in the martyrs themselves while beasts tore apart their limbs! When blood befouled all things and their entrails were poured out by the bites of beasts, did their eyes not possess only what they might shudder at? What was there to be loved, except that in that foulness of mutilated limbs there was the unimpaired beauty of justice?”
Plato speaks in the same sense—indeed, those holy Fathers speak from Plato’s meaning. He says that nothing is better than justice, which holds first place among the virtues and is their first ornament. O holy and praiseworthy justice,
beneath you, and through you, chastity reigns, peace triumphs, security and dignity flourish, and fruit is brought forth in patience. Justice makes kings greater than their kingdoms—indeed, sons of God. It draws even strangers and posterity to love it. Frederick, ruler of the Roman Empire, was educating the boy Ladislaus, king of Hungary and Bohemia. Those to whom utility was more powerful than honorableness urged him to join two most flourishing kingdoms to himself through the fall of one little body, without envy or infamy. But to Frederick, truly great, justice was of greater value than a heap of kingdoms; indeed, with a salutary admonition he suppressed the criminal counsels. “What, then?” he said. “Do you wish a rich king rather than a just one?” By this answer he struck them, since they saw that he would employ against themselves the same right which they had prescribed to him against another. Imitate this, prince; you have no greater gift from God.
§ 4. How different from him was Valentino, the tyrant of Italy, who retained by slaughters what he had seized by force and at last was compelled by death to restore it. And nevertheless he found a praiser; for Machiavelli, in chapter 7 of his Prince, after he had recounted Valentino’s crimes, says: “Therefore, when all the reasons for these deeds of Prince Valentino have been brought together in sum, I do not see in what matter I should censure him. Rather, I judge that he should be proposed for imitation by all those, as he was by me, who have been advanced to governments with fortune as leader and by the arms of others. For otherwise, since he bore a great and exalted spirit, and the purposes of his mind impelled him toward higher things, he could not administer his affair.”
But he both swiftly perished, and it is certain that kingdoms are preserved only by justice. If what is stronger is judged more equitable, first the weak, and then the strong when oppressed by stronger men, perish. For right and equity are the bonds of states; without them, what are kingdoms except great robberies? Kings are therefore δικασπόλοι, “ministers of justice,” for there is no commonwealth where there is no justice. And so Scipio argues splendidly in Cicero, as St. Augustine reports: “Therefore,” he says, “where there is no true justice, an assembly of human beings associated by a consensus of right cannot exist, and therefore neither can a people. And if it is not a people, neither is it the affair of a people, but of some multitude unworthy of the name of a people.”
There has never been another cause why peoples and provinces acquired by labor and blood revolted except injustice; for this reason governments are transferred from nation to nation. This affair drew the cities of Liguria and Lombardy away from the German Empire and dispersed them among various dominions. For when they had complained before the emperor and had shown that in two years alone they had suffered more harm from the German prefects than from tyrants during all the rest of the time, and nevertheless were held in contempt, they revolted. Having made a conspiracy and obtained security, they turned injuries against one another. For human beings first customarily act so that they cannot be oppressed; when they believe that they have obtained this, they also seek the power by which they can oppress others.
And so they bring it about that what Augustine inculcates to us in book 2 of The City of God, chapter 4, is true: “With justice removed, what are kingdoms except great robberies? For what are robberies themselves except little kingdoms? The band itself of human beings is ruled by the command of a leader, is bound by a compact of association, and divides booty by an agreed law. If this evil grows so greatly by the accessions of abandoned men that it also possesses places, establishes settlements, occupies cities, and subjugates peoples, it assumes the name of a kingdom all the more openly—a name conferred upon it not by desire taken away but by impunity added. For a certain captured pirate answered that famous Alexander the Great elegantly and truly. When the king asked the man what it seemed to him that he kept the sea hostile, he answered with free insolence: ‘The same that it seems to you that you keep the world hostile. But because I do it with a little vessel, I am called a robber; because you do it with a great fleet, you are called an emperor.’”
§ 5. I see that most kingdoms of this kind existed formerly. What else was Nebuchadnezzar than a great robber? He killed whom he wished and kept alive whom he wished. And what sort of robberies were the kingdoms of the Medes, who did not seek gold and silver but killed little children with arrows? The administration of the Persians was no better: their injustice was equal toward strangers and members of the household; for the fault of one, all his kindred were punished although innocent. Because the empires of the Greeks and Romans have more writers, they also supplied more examples of injustice punished. Therefore no riches and no power is stronger than justice; but there is no firmness of a kingdom so great that injustice does not dissolve and break it.
The reason for this is that the beginning of justice proceeded from nature; then certain things came into custom from a consideration of utility; afterward fear of the laws and religion sanctioned both things proceeding from nature and things approved by custom. When injustice removes these, it overthrows nature and again scatters the association of human beings which came together into an assembly to repel injuries.
§ 6. Therefore cultivate justice, prince, and be diligent in cultivating it. Against the crowd of courtiers be active and inquisitive, trust few, and scrutinize the smallest things; you will find no small deceits in the smallest ministries. Esteem nothing small. For where the affair even of abject human beings is conducted, where the eternal destruction of your magistrates—judging beneath you and at your peril—is to be feared, we call all things great. This extends so far that not even among monetary affairs, whether to be acquired or lost, should the things which the ecclesiastical Doctor discusses appear small, whether the money is great or small. For justice is not small, and we certainly ought to preserve it even in a small sum of money, as the Lord says: “He who is faithful in the least is faithful also in much.” What is least, therefore, is least; but to be faithful in the least is great.
For just as the principle of circularity is that all lines are drawn equal from the central point to the circumference, and this is the same in a large disk as in a little coin, so, where small things are conducted justly, the greatness of justice is not diminished. Finally, when the Apostle was speaking concerning secular judgments—which surely concern nothing but monetary affairs—he says: “Does any one of you, having a matter against another, dare to be judged before the unjust and not before the saints?” Why is it that the Apostle is so indignant, so corrects, so reproaches, so rebukes, so threatens? Why is it that he testifies to the disposition of his mind by so frequent and so harsh a change of voice? Finally, why does he speak so grandly concerning the smallest things? Did secular business concerning that affair merit so much? Far from it. Rather, he does this on account of justice, charity, and piety, which—even in affairs however small—are great, as no sober mind doubts. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, book 4, chapter 18.
§ 7. Nor can justice be defended by words or kindness alone; there is need of the sword and instruments of torture. Otherwise, in its own sanctuary, in its own tribunal, justice will be oppressed. The sanctity of all laws and the integrity of all judges rest upon the vigilant, severe, constant, inexorable justice of the prince. Its primary function is to appoint suitable judges and to punish prevaricators without hope of pardon. I praise the clemency of princes; but in the case of governors and judges who take gifts, who have delivered an inequitable sentence, and who have dissembled the injuries of the wretched, let severity alone have a place.
Louis XII, king of France, thought that the prince who does not punish a crime when he can is no less guilty than the man who perpetrated it. I judge this to be most true, therefore, in this most grave and difficult censuring of inferior magistrates. For through dissimulation not only does the audacity of the inequitable and rapacious increase, and the weakness of the innocent become their prey, but the prince’s good faith is also accused, as though he were an associate of honored and purple-clad thieves. For if the prince is said to be ignorant, the excuse is judged insulting, if it is not even his care to have knowledge of others’ calamities, when it belongs to him to bring the remedy.
In other matters an excuse has a place: if there has been a faltering in war; if battle was begun with too little courage or too little prudence; if a garrison surrendered through fear; if an error was made in an embassy; if the prince’s grain supply was preserved negligently. To exact, severely and constantly, penalties for justice violated by its own judge is not cruelty, but a most beautiful virtue among the parts of justice. He who is fierce against wolves is merciful toward sheep. The security of the unjust is the destruction of the best men.
No city, no household, not even one single human being can be governed without justice; and nevertheless rebellion against justice arises everywhere. O wretched human race! O dreadful spectacles, and yet daily ones! Scourges resound; full prisons are squalid; cords tear; claws shriek; rivers swallow; wheels are burdened; flames devour; quadrupeds drag men apart—and justice is not sufficiently sanctioned by so many punishments. The crimes that are avenged are always perpetrated by new authors. Amid so many deaths of the wretched, the thefts and robberies of judges, governors, and purple-clad men ought not to be unpunished. For how will men who sin more gravely avenge those crimes?
Who will give me holy kings, severe avengers of their own tyrannical men who range through their subjects’ fortunes and make a mockery of them, and guardians of kingdoms? Germany and Gaul once had Clovis and Charlemagne; Gaul had Sigebert and Louis; Spain, Alfonso the Chaste and Ferdinand III; England, two Edwards, two Ethelberts, William, Oswald, and Edmund; Hungary, Stephen and Ladislaus; Poland, Casimir and Boleslaus the Chaste; Germany, Rudolf and Henry; Denmark, Canute; Bohemia, two Wenceslauses; Norway, Olaf; Sweden, Henry; Austria, Leopold; Burgundy, Sigismund. Other kingdoms have had just, holy, severe, laborious kings who judged that no license capable of doing harm was to be permitted to their men, and who kept the good in their duty by their own sanctity and the wicked by the vigorous justice of vengeance.
I am not ignorant that clemency is expected of me, that human life is sacred, and that a magistracy occupied with the lives of guilty men is most difficult. But so many calumnies and oppressions of the innocent, and the so intolerable insolence of certain magistrates who crush the heads of the poor together with the dust of the earth, compel princes to be severe. Let him be gentle in spirit, let him be mild, let him be slow to punishment and swift to rewards. Yet let him condemn—even with tears, after the example of Bias—the wicked and rapacious judge, the client or intimate who has abused confidence in the king’s love for crimes and the calamities of the needy; but let him condemn him nevertheless. Let him expend guilty blood, although it be that of a friend, upon justice and the public peace, not upon the sweetness of vengeance.
Themistocles used to say that he preferred to go to a tomb rather than to a tribunal. This is a remarkable example of mildness—if he said what Aelian recounts concerning him, or felt what he is reported to have said. Here the prince must be brave and cautious. Brave, because powerful men must be dragged to punishment; the condemnation of cheap blood is easy, because there is no difficulty in its execution. Brave, because the laws often act against friends, kinsmen, and brothers. Cautious, because powerful men have many patrons, and many arts, if they do not defend a bad case, at least prolong it; and, if all else fails, guilty men purchase perjuries.
Walk upon the royal road, you who rule the multitude. Think all men yours; consider all to be your sons. He is more closely joined to you whose cause merits your patronage. This is your condition: when judging between friends, you will have one of the two as an enemy. Do not fear; God is present to justice. Even men not particularly just will furnish examples for you. Publius Rutilius refused a friend’s inequitable requests. The friend, raging, said: “What need have I of your friendship if I do not obtain what I ask?” Publius replied: “Rather, what need have I of yours, if I am to do something dishonorable for your sake?” The friend of Rutilius acted most wickedly, for he wished friendship to be the procuress and broker of injustice; Rutilius acted excellently, for he renounced false friendship in order to patronize true justice.
Agis likewise resisted the desire of his parents. Although they pressed him importunately, lest he fail their cause, and urged him by their paternal right, he remained unmoved: he had already surrendered himself to his country and its laws and could not act against those laws whose obedience and veneration he had learned from his parents.
Antigonus showed the same affection for his brother Marsyas and the same constant will for a reputation of justice. For when Marsyas, on account of their brotherly intimacy, requested that his case be heard at home within the walls, Antigonus answered nothing except: “If we are doing nothing besides what is right, it will be done better in the forum, with everyone listening.” This equality in judging is altogether necessary for a kingdom. For if people see the prince yield to affections in certain cases, they cry out that justice has been taken away universally. Of those who have lost a case, few acknowledge that they were defeated by right; instead, they become angry either at the judge or at their advocates. They assert that even their most inequitable suits were condemned not by right and laws but by hatred and money, count themselves, according to the customary manner of human beings, among those whom it is agreed were unjustly oppressed, and seek consolation for their loss from slander and insults against their rulers.
§ 8. But if it pleases us to recount examples of those who gravely avenged the crimes and robberies of their judges, I fear that too many will occur. And this is by the fault of the supreme magistrate, who entrusts the web and guardianship of right, laws, sanctity, and equity to depraved and perverse violators of the laws, just as one entrusts a sword to madmen. Yet they themselves are not free of fault, because it is manifest madness to undertake burdens which you cannot carry. For burdens greater than the bearer must necessarily crush him. Therefore let there be the greatest solicitude in appointing good judges; thus there will be fewer punishments of those who have failed in their duty. Yet even thus there will be many punishments of those whom either the opportunity for sinning has made wicked or the license of power has exposed.
What Cambyses, king of the Persians, did belongs to a crude antiquity and is not praiseworthy in every respect; nevertheless, by this one splendid deed amid infinite crimes he is celebrated. Sisamnes had sold judgments for a price. Cambyses ordered him killed, his skin stripped off, and the tribunal covered—or, as others say, fitted together—with it; and, to show that he was angry at injustice and not at the man, he wished Sisamnes’ son to pronounce law from the same
seat, admonished that, terrified by his father’s punishment, he should pronounce law according to the prescription of the laws, not from love of gifts. This latter act was harsh and, in keeping with the king’s disposition, plainly barbarous; but nevertheless it is something that inculcates zeal for justice in a prince.
Aurelian pursued provincial thieves—men guilty of extortion and embezzlement—beyond measure in a military fashion, so that he punished them with immense penalties and torments. Severus was violently moved against inequitable judges and judged that their eyes should be dug out with a finger. Andronicus punished Theodore, a foremost man, with twelve strokes of clubs because, when he had lodged with farmers, he had paid absolutely nothing. I make an end; the most learned Justus Lipsius and others adduce more examples in their admonitions.
I give this warning: if princes are severe, they will have many Vespasians, who administered a province as governor with a better reputation than he administered the Empire when made Augustus. Tranquillus speaks thus of him: “Thereafter, having obtained Africa by lot, he administered it with the greatest integrity and not without great dignity, except that, in a certain disturbance at Hadrumetum, turnips were thrown at him. He certainly returned no richer, since, his credit now almost ruined, he mortgaged all his estates to his brother and was compelled, in order to sustain his dignity, to descend to the profits of mule-dealing; on account of this he was commonly called the Muleteer.”
A muleteer of this kind should certainly be preferred to all knights and masters of knights, if the other things corresponded. Therefore in your kingdom let those words and precepts be heard which Comnenus repeatedly inculcated upon his prefects: “Leave behind either injuries or life; for that you should act unjustly and live is neither pleasing to God nor tolerable to me, his minister.” Agapetus spoke truly:
Δυσθήρατος ἐστὶν ἡ τοῦ δικαίου εὕρεσις, ῥᾳδίως ἐκφεύγουσα τοὺς μὴ λίαν προσέχοντας.
Justice is difficult to capture; it easily slips from the hands of those who do not attend diligently. When you have commanded, subscribed, sealed, and sent a messenger, there will be someone who evades, someone who delays the commands, someone who warns the accused. I certainly approve the saying of St. Cyprian: “The justice of the king is the peace of peoples, the protection of the fatherland, the immunity of the common people, the fortification of the nation, the care of the sick, the joy of human beings, the temperateness of the air, the serenity of the sea, the fertility of the earth, the consolation of the poor, the inheritance of sons, and for himself the hope of future blessedness.”
§ 9. Therefore let him inquire into judges. In Spain and Venice commissions of inquiry are most useful and ought to be introduced everywhere. For without justice concord cannot be preserved, nor without concord can a city remain safe. A judge ought to regard justice, not the will of the prince; much less ought the prince to regard the judge, whom he will rightly condemn if he sees that the judge has pronounced not according to justice but according to the prince’s affection. Hanno, bishop of Cologne, ordered the eyes of inequitable judges to be torn out; he left one of them one eye so that he might lead the rest home. Philip of Valois provided by testament that an inquiry should be made into the judges even after his death. This ought altogether to be done. If human punishment is evaded, divine vengeance will nevertheless seize both the judges and the prince by whose connivance a judge sins—perhaps late, but gravely. Nor is discretion in determining permitted to a judge; rather, a law is laid down. The supreme prince alone can grant pardon for an offense; this too has been granted to the princes of Germany among the regalian rights. And certainly to bend and mitigate the harshness of the laws by kindness is a royal work.
Nor will the prince easily concede to a judge the diminution or remission of a punishment. Although Charles V made great concessions to the Senate of Milan, he retained this part for himself. The decrees of France do not concede it even to the king’s mother. In Spain there is a singular tribunal in which deliberation is held concerning the giving of pardon and the granting of grace. Jerome Casteg, On the Union of Portugal and Castile, book 8. Charles ordered a judge hanged who had punished by cutting off the hand of a guilty man worthy of hanging.
§ 10. It has been asked whether a prince can judge in his own case. They answer affirmatively from law 3, Concerning Those Things Which Are in Testaments; law 41, Concerning the Institution of Heirs; and the final section at the end of the Institutes, Concerning Ordinary Substitution. They add that he cannot be alleged as suspect. I see that many of the heretics think thus, and some Catholics also have sometimes appeared to me to approve the same thing.
Now this matter can be asked in two ways. First, whether, every law set aside, it is inequitable by nature itself to have the same man as judge and adversary. Second, whether in well-constituted commonwealths and kingdoms, where there is an order of laws and judgments, this is lawful. It seems to me contrary to nature and justice that an emperor, king, or prince himself should judge in his own case. A judge, or δικαστής, is in the middle between the parties, so that he may protect the equality of right on both sides. Second, in the commonwealth of the Hebrews it was not lawful for Ahab to deliver judgment between himself and Naboth; therefore he took refuge in calumny. Third, a private person defeated by that judgment is never bound to acquiesce. For since princes are changeable, subject also to affections and errors, and for the most part also lovers of themselves and tenacious of majesty, no one is bound to entrust himself to the judgment of a man whom he knows and experiences as an adversary.
The highest reason for this matter is that, when truth and justice are investigated, in order that the investigation and adjudication may be legitimate, the parties ought to be equal in all things, so that only the weight of the case and the reasons may constitute inequality. Let this be an example. The empress Eudoxia entered a widow’s vineyard and plucked grapes; therefore both she and the emperor contended that the vineyard had passed into the empress’s right. If in her own case either she herself or the emperor is judge, the matter is already concluded, for the matter has been decided in the highest tribunal. But the widow denies that Caesar or his wife can be given to her as judge. Nor is it less unjust for her to be compelled to undergo such a judgment than to yield the estate. For she is in the worse position not by the kind of case but by the desire of the judge, which obstructs the establishment of equality between the litigants. This judgment, therefore, is always contrary to justice by its own nature.
But the prince, even without affection, will pronounce sentence against himself. A heroically just prince will sometimes do this; but no one believes that all will always do so. God alone is judge in his own case, because his will is immutable justice and his judgments are true, justified in themselves. God alone is truthful, but every human being is a liar. Why, then, will a senator be compelled to abide by the sentence of Gaius or Nero when they themselves are present and torture him with their countenance? The prince is sometimes said himself to judge because he pronounces through his judges; but in this case they are sworn not to the prince but to the whole commonwealth and to justice. Therefore the prince may neither inquire into them nor show that their sentence displeased him if he lost the case, for he casts fear into the judge.
§ 11. Hence in all kingdoms governed by law and institutions, the cases of kings and princes against subjects are judged by others. The count palatine judges the emperor’s case when he judges in Caesar’s court, according to the Golden Bull. The king of France, Spain, or Bohemia can be sued by his subjects. Hence there are so many royal advocates in France. Hence, I think, law π., Concerning the Right of the Fisc. Hence the holy
constitution of Philip II, king of the Spains, that the president of the royal council should pronounce against the fisc in a doubtful case. For no commonwealth wished to commit the bodies and fortunes of its subjects to the private affections of princes, but to the public declaration of justice. Therefore the rejection of a suspect judge belongs to natural right, so that it cannot be denied; and the custom of all nations proves this. But if the prince himself is suspect—and in his own case he is always suspect—his judgment is refused much more justly than that of any inferior person, because both appeal is cut off and execution is readier.
Nor can the commonwealth grant this. For just as it cannot determine that Gaius’s estate be given to Titius—for that is spoliation—so neither can it determine that Gaius, without fault, come into danger of losing his estate. For to cast an innocent person without cause into danger of life and fortunes is as inequitable as to strip him of life or fortunes: unequal in degree, indeed, but like in injustice. Will you then compel me to entrust myself to my adversary, to whom my losses are profit? Will kinship, affinity, a similar case, or favor toward an enemy—that is, something extraneous—bring it about that I am not compelled to abide by the sentence of an adversary, but will the person himself, αὐτότης, not bring this about?