[14] It will be remembered that the ancient law of Rome, the Twelve Tables, authorized creditors to take an insolvent debtor, kill him and divide his body amongst them, a real execution against the person more trenchant if not more effective than the _capias ad satisfaciendum_ dear to the English lawyer. [15] Everyone has shuddered at the awful picture drawn by Juvenal in his Sixth Satire of the fashionable Roman dame who had eight husbands in five years and who ordered her slave to immediate crucifixion. When her husband mildly ventured to suggest that there should at least be some evidence of guilt and that no time should be considered long where the life of a man is in question he was snubbed, just as the Roman lady who was expostulated with for taking her bath in the presence of man slaves asked "_An servus homo?_" The horrible but pithy dialogue reads: "Pone crucem servo." "Meruit quo crimine servus Supplicium? Quis testis adest? Quis detulit? Audi Nulla umquam de morte hominis cunctatio longa est" "O demens, ita servus homo est? Nil fecerit, esto Hoc volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas." --_Juvenal, Sat._, VI, ll. 219-223. "The cross for the slave!" "What is the charge? What is the evidence? Who laid the information? Hear what he has to say--No delay is ever great where the death of a man is in question." "You driveller! So a slave is a man! Have it your own way--he did nothing. I wish it, that is my order, my wish is a good enough reason." The natural death for a Roman slave was on the cross or under the scourge. [16] Constantine also by his Constitution No. 319 provided for slaves becoming free: the Constitution referred to in the text is No. 326. The best short account of slave legislation in Rome which I have seen is in a paper read by the late Vice Chancellor Proudfoot of the Ontario Court of Chancery, February 7, 1891, before the Canadian Institute. _Trans. Can. Ins._, Series IV, Vol. 2, p. 173. Many of the judgments of Vice Chancellor Proudfoot (venerabile nomen) show a profound knowledge and appreciation of the Civil Law. The following is taken from Prof. Sherman's great work _Roman Law in the Modern World_, Boston, 1917. The learned author has laid philosophical lawyers of all countries under heavy obligations by this splendid book, as noted for its lucidity as for its learning. Vol. I, 69. "To inflict unnatural cruelty upon--and finally to kill--a slave was prohibited by Augustus Claudius and Antoninus Pius. Moreover, because by natural law all men were born free and equal (see Digest, 50, 17, 32) the Emperor often restored to slaves the status of a freeborn person." I, 146. "Constantine ... abolished crucifixion as a punishment; encouraged the emancipation of slaves...."