Book 9
882
Ath. and should he disobey the law and illegally defile sacred things and the State, any magistrate who notices his case and fails to bring him up for trial shall have to face this omission as one of the heaviest charges against him at his audit. If it be a slave that strikes the free man—stranger or citizen—the bystander shall help, failing which he shall pay the penalty as fixed according to his assessment;Cp. Plat. Laws 880d. and the bystanders together with the person assaulted shall bind the slave, and hand him over to the injured person, and he shall take charge of him and bind him in fetters, and give him as many stripes with the scourge as he pleases, provided that he does not spoil his value to the damage of his master, to whose ownership he shall hand him over according to law. The law shall stand thus:—Whosoever, being a slave, beats a free man without order of the magistrates,—him his owner shall take over in bonds from the person assaulted, and he shall not loose him until the slave have convinced the person assaulted that he deserves to live loosed from bonds. The same laws shall hold good for all such cases when both parties are women, or when the plaintiff is a woman and the defendant a man, or the plaintiff a man and the defendant a woman.
