ABSTRACT
Roman jurists classified as penal those actions derived from delicts to punish the wrongdoer. Along with contracts, the other significant branch of the law of obligations is that of delicts private wrongs for which redress was provided by civil law. In later law, however, some actions called actiones mixtae served both the penal and the compensatory functions. Purely penal actions needed to be complemented by so-called reipersecutory actions, whose exclusive purpose was the restitution of an item or compensation for damages – in the case of theft, recovery of the thing stolen. To punish robbery, a special action was introduced, probably by the praetor peregrinus Licinius Luculus in 76 bce. The lex Aquilia introduced general provisions on wrongful damage to property and largely superseded old provisions and specific cases mentioned by the Twelve Tables and other statutes. The delict of outrage or injury was a product of the development of Roman delictual obligations.
