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Justinian I · The Digest of Justinian §12.2.12.pr

Inheritance Claims against Other Possessors and Oath Effects

Passage 1909 of 9271 · Latin

Summary

Explains that even when claiming inheritance property from another possessor, the previous oath made against a different party is of no effect, and one must prove their claim again.

[IULIANUS libro nono digestorum. ] §12.2.12.prIdem est et si ego a quolibet alio possidente res hereditarias petere uelim, quia et si petissem a te hereditatem et probassem meam, nihilo minus ab altero petendo id ipsum probare necesse haberem.
[JULIAN, Digest, Book IX.] The same is true even if I should wish to claim the inheritance property from any other person in possession, because even if I had claimed the inheritance from you and proved it to be mine, I would nonetheless have to prove that very same thing when claiming it from another.

Notes

  1. 12.2.12.prprobassem meam — The subject hereditatem and the copula esse of the accusative-with-infinitive construction are omitted after the verb probassem (first-person singular pluperfect subjunctive of probare, 'to prove'), and meam functions as the predicate adjective ('that it [the inheritance] was mine').
  2. 12.2.12.prpetissem ... necesse haberem — This is a contrary-to-fact conditional sentence, where the pluperfect subjunctives (petissem, probassem) in the protasis refer to a past hypothetical event (which did not actually happen), while the imperfect subjunctive (necesse haberem) in the apodosis refers to a present or ongoing necessity resulting from that hypothesis.

Cite this passage

Justinian I, The Digest of Justinian §12.2.12.pr. Humanitext Reader, https://reader.humanitext.ai/en/text/urn:cts:latinLit:phi2806.phi002.humanitext-lat1:12.2.12.pr

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