[52] The uncia (whence our "ounce") is the unit of division of the as and is used also as one-twelfth of anything. One-twelfth of the principal paid yearly as interest equals 8-1/3%. [53] This originally is a religious penalty, whereby the person is sacrificed. But sacer comes to mean "a person disgraced and outlawed and deprived of his property." [54] At a sale (_mancipium_ or _mancipatio_) the buyer in the presence of five adult citizens had his money weighed by another adult citizen who held scales for this purpose. This practice obtained originally ere the introduction of coinage. [55] That is, enactments referring to a single citizen, whether or not in his favor. [56] Caput includes also privileges of citizenship (_civitas_). [57] Commonly known as the _comitia centuriata_, an assembly which comprised all citizens. To this assembly a citizen convicted in court on a capital charge had the right of appeal (_ius provocationis_) at least as early as the passage of the Lex Valeria in 509 B.C., for Cicero claims that the pontifical as well as the augural books state that the right of appeal from the regal sentences had been recognized (De Re Publica, 11. 31. 54). [58] This statute is quoted by Cicero (De Legibus, III. 4. 11), who inserts censores (censors) as the subject of the last verb _locassint_ (have placed). But the last clause must have been "modernized" either by Cicero or in his source, because the promulgation of the Twelve Tables in 449 B.C. antedated the creation of the censorship, which can not be traced higher than 443 B.C., if we can believe Livy's account of its institution (op. cit., IV. 8. 2-7). Before that time the consuls superintended the lists of citizens. [59] The first provision doubtlessly descends from a primitive tribal tabu. Cicero supposes that the second provision is due to danger from fire (De Legibus, II. 23. 58). [60] In view of the simplicity enjoined in some of the following statutes of this Table, for the decemvirs apparently took a dim view of extravagant funerals, this statute seems to mean that a rough-hewn pyre without elaborate smoothness of its wooden material suffices for the cremation-couch of a citizen. [61] Cicero says that some older interpreters suspected that some kind of mourning-garment was meant by _lessus_, but that he inclines to the interpretation that it signifies a sort of sorrowful wailing (De Legibus, II.23.59) [62] This provision is aimed at the common custom of prolonging mourning by gathering and preserving unburied some part of the corpse. When this part (_os resectum_) later had been buried, then only mourning ceased. It is possible that some Romans may have thought that cremation might be wrong or that its ceremony was inadequate. [63] That is, in such a case a limb could be carried to Rome and then buried. [64] That is, a garland or a chaplet or a wreath as a prize of achievement. [65] A chattel, for example, is a slave or a horse who wins a wreath for the owner.