XV
[15arg] How severely thieves were punished by the laws of our forefathers; and whit Mucius Scaevola wrote about that which is given or entrusted to anyone's care.LABEO, in his second book On the Twelve Tables, 1 wrote that cruel and severe judgments were passed [p. 65] upon theft in early times, and that Brutus used to say 2 that a man was pronounced guilty of theft who had merely led an animal to another place than the one where he had been given the privilege of using it, as well as one who had driven it farther than he had bargained to do. Accordingly, Quintus Scaevola, in the sixteenth book of his work On the Civil Law, wrote these words: 3 “If anyone has used something that was entrusted to his care, or having borrowed anything to use, has applied it to another purpose than that for which he borrowed it, he is liable for theft.”
