ABSTRACT

One day in approximately 150, a young man stood before the praetor and stated that, for all his efforts, he could not reach a verdict in a case that had been set before him. The case presented a moral problem to Aulus Gellius. A respectable man had no proof that he had loaned money to a less than respectable man, and this scoundrel claimed no such loan had been made. Aulus Gellius realised that the law required him to accept the scoundrel’s word, but he could not bring himself to rule accordingly, so he sought the advice of those friends whom he asked to be advisors on the case, and also asked the opinion of his philosopher friend Favorinus. The former gave him the correct legal opinion, the latter the correct moral opinion.