Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/186

166 but to the state, and accordingly here too it depended upon the state whether or not it would advance its bounds.

There were exceptions from these general rules, created by special state-treaties, which secured certain rights to the members of foreign communities within the Roman state. In particular, the perpetual league between Rome and Latium declared all contracts between Romans and Latius to be valid in law, and at the same time instituted in reference to them a speedy civil process before sworn "recoverers" (reciperatores). As contrary to the Roman usage, which in other instances committed the decision to a single judge, these always sat several in number and that number uneven, they are probably to be regarded as a court for the cognizance of commercial dealings, composed of arbiters from both nations and an umpire. They sat in judgment at the place where the contract was entered into, and they were obliged to have the process terminated at latest in ten days. The forms, under which the dealings between Romans and Latins were conducted, were of course the general forms which regulated the mutual dealings of patricians and plebeians; for the mancipatio and the nexum were originally no mere formal acts, but the significant embodiment of legal ideas which held a sway at least as extensive as the range of the Latin language.

Dealings with countries strictly foreign were carried on in a different fashion and by means of other forms. In very early times treaties as to commerce and legal redress must have been entered into with the Cærites and other friendly peoples, and must have formed the basis of that international private law (jus gentium), which gradually became developed in Rome alongside of the law of the land. An indication of the formation of such a system is found in the remarkable mutuum, "exchange" (from mutare like dividuus); a form of loan, which was not based like the nexum upon a binding declaration of the debtor expressly emitted before witnesses, but upon the mere transit of the money from one hand to another, and which as evidently originated in dealings with foreigners as the nexum in business dealings at home. It is accordingly a significant fact that the word reappears in Sicilian Greek as 🇬🇷; and with this there is to be connected the reappearance of the Latin carcer in the Sicilian 🇬🇷. Since it is philologically certain that both words were originally Latin, their occurrence in the local dialect