ABSTRACT
The most ancient memorial of Roman law, the laws of the twelve tablets, begins with the regulation dealing with the summons before court: 'Si in jus vocat, ni it, antestamino igitur in capito'. Non-acquiescence to the norm, violation of the norm, rupture of normal intercourse and resulting conflict, is the point of departure and main content of archaic legislation. Historically, the specific traits of legal intercourse were acquired primarily as a result of actual violation of the law. Thus a violation of law which was very important to landowners, such as the wilful displacement of boundary markers, was traditionally viewed as a religious offence, and the guilty person's head fell into the power of the gods. In other circumstances, even penalties inflicted by the priestly caste for attacks on their revenue – refusal of prescribed ceremonies or of sacrificial offerings, attempts to introduce new religious doctrines of any sort, and so forth – were of a public nature.
