Sacramentum
object · 2 works · 2 mentions · 3 anchored passages
the stake
in the texts
Ancient Law
The monetary wager staked by litigants in the Legis Actio Sacramenti and claimed by the State.
The magnitude of this sum as compared with the trifling amount of the Sacramentum seems to me indicative of the difference between fluctuating usage and usage consolidated into law.
” On this, the first claimant offers to stake a sum of money, called a Sacramentum, on the justice of his own case, “Quando tu injuriâ provocasti, D æris Sacramento te provoco,” and the defendant, in the phrase, “Similiter ego te,” accepts the wager.
Lectures on the Early History of Institutions
The sum of money staked by disputants in the Legis Actio Sacramenti, forfeited to the state.
The disputants staked a sum of money—the Sacramentum, from which the proceedings took their name—on the merits of their quarrel, and the stake went into the public exchequer.