'For long an ominous whisper has reached our ears that certain persons, despising _civilitas_, affect a life of beastly barbarism[607], returning to the wild beginnings of society, and looking with a fierce hatred on all human laws. The present seems to us a fitting time for repressing these men, in order that we may be hunting down vice and immorality within the Republic at the same time that, with God's help, we are resisting her external foes. Both are hurtful, both have to be repelled; but the internal enemy is even more dangerous than the external. One, however, rests upon the other; and we shall more easily sweep down the armies of our enemies if we subdue under us the vices of the age. [This allusion to foreign enemies is perhaps explained by the hint in Jordanes ('De Reb. Get.' 59) of threatened war with the Franks. But he gives us no sufficient indication of time to enable us to fix the date of the Edictum.] [Footnote 607: 'Affectare vivere belluina saevitia.'] 'I. _Forcible Appropriation of Landed Property_[608] (Pervasio). This is a crime which is quite inconsistent with _civilitas_, and we remit those who are guilty of it to the punishment[609] provided by a law of Divus Valentinianus [Valentinian III. Novell. xix. 'De Invasoribus'], adding that if anyone is unable to pay the penalty therein provided he shall suffer banishment (deportatio). He ought to have been more chary of disobeying the laws if he had no means to pay the penalty. Judges who shrink from obeying this law, and allow the _Pervasor_ to remain in possession of what he has forcibly annexed, shall lose their offices and be held liable to pay to our Treasury the same fine which might have been exacted from him. If the _Pervasor_ sets the Judge's official staff (officium) at defiance, on the report of the Judge our Sajones will make _him_ feel the weight of the royal vengeance who refused to obey the [humbler] _Cognitor_. [Footnote 608: 'Praedia urbana vel rustica.'] [Footnote 609: The punishment consisted in loss of all claim to the property--which was generally seized by someone who had some kind of ostensible claim to it--and a penalty of equal value with that of the property wrongfully seized.] 'II. _Affixing Titles to Property._ [When land had from any cause become public property, the Emperor's officers used to affix _tituli_, to denote the fact and to warn off all other claimants. Powerful men who had dispossessed weaker claimants used to imitate this practice, and are here forbidden to do so.] 'This offence shall subject the perpetrator to the same penalties as _pervasio_. It is really a kind of sacrilege to try to add the majesty of the royal name to the weight of his own oppression. Costs are to be borne by the defeated claimant.