In the regulation of the pastoral and agricultural life of the community, custom played a very important part, and this was recognized and enforced by royal authority. Carelessness in looking after cattle was punished by fine, but the owner was not held responsible for damage unless negligence could be proved on his part. Thus a bull might go wild at any time and gore a man, who would have no redress against its owner. But if the beast was known to be vicious, and its owner had not blunted its horns nor shut it up, he was obliged to pay compensation for damage. On the other hand, the owner of cattle or asses, who had hired them out, could exact compensation for the loss or ill-treatment of his beasts. These were framed on the principle that the hirer was responsible only for damage or loss which; he could reasonably have prevented. If, for example, a lion killed a hired ox or ass in the open country, or if an ox was killed by lightning, the loss fell upon the owner and not on the man who had hired the beast. But if the hirer killed the ox through carelessness or by beating it unmercifully, or if the beast broke its leg while in his charge, he had to restore to the owner another ox in its place. For less serious damage to the beast the hirer paid compensation on a fixed scale.[10] It is clear that such regulations merely gave the royal sanction to long-established custom. Both for looking after their herds and for the cultivation of their estates the landed proprietors depended to a great extent upon hired herdsmen and farmers; and any dishonesty on the part of the latter with regard to cattle, provender, or seed-corn was severely punished. A theft of provender, for example, had to be made good, and the culprit ran the additional risk of having his hands cut off. Heavy compensation was exacted from any man, who, for his own profit, hired out oxen which had been entrusted to his charge; while, if a farmer stole the seed-corn supplied for the field he had hired, so that he produced no crop to share with the owner, not only had he to pay compensation but he was liable to be torn in pieces by oxen in the field he should have cultivated.[11] In the age of Hammurabi the heavier penalties were no doubt largely traditional, having come down from a more barbarous time when dishonesty could only be kept in check by strong measures. Their retention among the statutes doubtless acted as an effective deterrent, and a severe sentence, if carried out occasionally in the case of an aggravated offence, would have sufficed to maintain respect for the regulations.