Emptio et Venditio
In Roman law the contract of buying and selling consists in the buyer agreeing to give a
certain sum of money to the seller, and the seller agreeing to give to the buyer some certain
thing for his money. After the agreement is made the buyer is bound to pay his money, even if
the thing which is the object of purchase should be accidentally destroyed before it is
delivered; and the seller must deliver the thing with all its intermediate increase. The
seller must also guarantee a good title to the purchase (see
Evictio), and he must also guarantee that the thing has no concealed
defects, and that it has all the good qualities which he (the seller) attributes to it. It was
with a view to check frauds in sales, and especially in the sales of slaves, that the seller
was obliged, by the edict of the curule aediles (see
Edictum), to inform the buyer of the defects of any slave offered for sale:
Qui
mancipia vendunt, certiores faciant emtores quod morbi vitiique, etc. In reference to
this part of the law, in addition to the usual action arising from the contract, the
buyer had against the seller, according to the circumstances, an
actio ex
stipulatu, redhibitoria, and
quanti minoris. Horace, in the
beginning of the second epistle of the second book, alludes to the precautions to be taken by
the buyer and the seller of a slave.
