Exoules Diké
（
ἐξούλης δίκη). An action under the Attic law, for
ejectment, resorted to by a plaintiff when his title to the property in question was so much
better than the defendant's as to be indisputable. Thus a son or other male descendant (also a
son adopted during the testator's lifetime) might enter (see
Embateia), and become possessed of the estate immediately after the
owner's death (
Isae. Pyrrh. 61). Such an heir made
a formal entry upon the land, and thereby became “seised” or possessed of
it; then the adverse claimant came and turned him off (Demosth.
c. Leoch. p.
1090.32). This proceeding took place quietly and in the presence of witnesses (
Isae. Pyrrh. 22); and then the heir might bring against
him an action for ejectment.
These proceedings by entry, ouster, etc., were a relic of ancient times, when, before
regular processes were invented, parties adopted a ruder method and took the law into their
own hands. There was then an actual ouster, accompanied often with violence and breach of the
peace, for which the person in the wrong was not only responsible to the party injured, but
was also punishable as a public offender. Afterwards, in the course of civilization, violent
remedies became useless and were discontinued; yet the ceremony of ejection was still kept up
as a form of law, being deemed by lawyers a necessary foundation of the subsequent legal
process. Thus at Rome, in the earlier times, one party used to summon the other by the words
ex iure te manum consertum voco, to go with him to the land in dispute,
and (in the presence of the praetor and others) turn him out by force. Afterwards this was
changed into the symbolical act of breaking a clod of earth upon the land, by which the person
who broke intimated that he claimed a right to deal with the land as he pleased.
