The subject of litigation is supposed to be in Court. If it is moveable, it is actually there. If it be immoveable, a fragment or sample of it is brought in its place; land, for instance, is represented by a clod, a house by a single brick. In the example selected by Gaius, the suit is for a slave. The proceeding begins by the plaintiff's advancing with a rod, which, as Gaius expressly tells, symbolised a spear. He lays hold of the slave and asserts a right to him with the words, "_Hunc ego hominem ex Jure Quiritium meum esse dico secundum suam causam sicut dixi_;" and then saying, "_Ecce tibi Vindictam imposui_," he touches him with the spear. The defendant goes through the same series of acts and gestures. On this the Praetor intervenes, and bids the litigants relax their hold, "_Mittite ambo hominem_." They obey, and the plaintiff demands from the defendant the reason of his interference, "_Postulo anne dicas qua ex causa vindicaveris_," a question which is replied to by a fresh assertion of right, "_Jus peregi sicut vindictam imposui_." On this, the first claimant offers to stake a sum of money, called a Sacramentum, on the justice of his own case, "_Quando tu injuria provocasti, D aeris Sacramento te provoco_," and the defendant, in the phrase "_Similiter ego te_," accepts the wager. The subsequent proceedings were no longer of a formal kind, but it is to be observed that the Praetor took security for the Sacramentum, which always went into the coffers of the State. Such was the necessary preface of every ancient Roman suit. It is impossible, I think, to refuse assent to the suggestion of those who see in it a dramatisation of the Origin of Justice. Two armed men are wrangling about some disputed property. The Praetor, _vir pietate gravis_, happens to be going by, and interposes to stop the contest. The disputants state their case to him, and agree that he shall arbitrate between them, it being arranged that the loser, besides resigning the subject of the quarrel, shall pay a sum of money to the umpire as remuneration for his trouble and loss of time. This interpretation would be less plausible than it is, were it not that, by a surprising coincidence, the ceremony described by Gaius as the imperative course of proceeding in a Legis Actio is substantially the same with one of the two subjects which the God Hephaestus is described by Homer as moulding into the First Compartment of the Shield of Achilles. In the Homeric trial-scene, the dispute, as if expressly intended to bring out the characteristics of primitive society, is not about property but about the composition for a homicide. One person asserts that he has paid it, the other that he has never received it. The point of detail, however, which stamps the picture as the counterpart of the archaic Roman practice is the reward designed for the judges. Two talents of gold lie in the middle, to be given to him who shall explain the grounds of the decision most to the satisfaction