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Justinian I · The Digest of Justinian §49.15.28.pr

Ownership of War Booty and Recaptured Captives

Passage 8600 of 9271 · Latin

Summary

Labeo asserts that captured war property becomes booty and is excluded from postliminium, but Paul qualifies this by stating that a captive who flees home after peace and is recaptured in a subsequent war returns to the original captor unless otherwise agreed.

[LABEO libro quarto pithanon a Paulo epitomatorum. ] §49.15.28.prSi quid bello captum est, in praeda est, non postliminio redit.
[LABEO, Book 4 of Plausibilities, epitomized by Paul] anything is captured in war, it is part of the booty and does not return by postliminium.
PAULUS. immo si in bello captus pace facta domum refugit, deinde renouato bello capitur, postliminio redit ad eum, a quo priore bello captus erat, si modo non conuenerit in pace, ut captiui redderentur.
PAULUS. Nay rather, if a person captured in war flees home after peace is made, and then, upon the renewal of war, is captured, he returns by postliminium to the one by whom he had been captured in the prior war, provided only that it was not agreed in the peace treaty that captives should be returned.

Notes

  1. 49.15.28.primmo — A particle of strong qualification or correction used by Paul to introduce an exception to Labeo's general negative statement (*non postliminio redit*). It means "nay rather" or "on the contrary."
  2. 49.15.28.prcaptus — The perfect participle used substantively in the masculine singular nominative, meaning "the captured person" or "the captive." It serves as the subject of the subsequent verbs `redit` and `captus erat`, narrowing Labeo's neuter pronoun `quid` ("anything") down to a human captive (in this context, a slave).
  3. 49.15.28.prsi modo non conuenerit in pace, ut captiui redderentur — `si modo` introduces a restrictive condition ("provided only that"). `conuenerit` is used impersonally ("it was agreed"), taking the noun clause `ut captiui redderentur` (with the imperfect subjunctive) as its subject, which expresses the substance of the agreement.

Cite this passage

Justinian I, The Digest of Justinian §49.15.28.pr. Humanitext Reader, https://reader.humanitext.ai/en/text/urn:cts:latinLit:phi2806.phi002.humanitext-lat1:49.15.28.pr

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