According to the Laws of Manu, “he who damages the goods of another, be it intentionally or unintentionally, shall give satisfaction to the owner and pay to the king a fine equal to the damage”;[58] and various rites of expiation are prescribed for a person who kills a Brâhmana by accident,[59] whereas the intentional slaying of a Brâhmana is inexpiable.[60]
[58] Laws of Manu, viii. 288.
[59] Ibid. xi. 73 sqq.
[60] Ibid. xi. 90. Gautama, xxi. 7. According to some authorities, however, the wilful slaying of a Brâhmana was expiable by a penance of greater severity (Bühler’s note, in his translation of the ‘Laws of Manu,’ Sacred Books of the East, xxv. 449).
Demosthenes praises the Athenian law for making the penalty of unintentional homicide less than that of intentional. The punishment for murder was death, from which, however, before the sentence was passed, the murderer was at liberty to escape by withdrawing from his country and remaining in perpetual exile. But he who was convicted of involuntary homicide had to leave the country only for some shorter time, until he had appeased the relatives of the deceased.[61] As will be seen subsequently, the real object of this law was not so much to punish the involuntary manslayer, as to save him from being persecuted by the dead man’s ghost, and to rid the community of a pollution. However, the Athenian law does not represent the ideas of early times. As Dr. Farnell observes, the constitution and the legend about the foundation of the court at the Palladium, which was established to try cases of unintentional blood-shedding, shows that the ancient practice was susceptible of improvement.[62] Nor does the Roman law, which, in its developed shape, with such a remarkable consistency carried out the Cornelian principle, “in maleficiis voluntas spectatur non exitus,”[63] seem to have been equally discriminate in early times.[64] In the Law of the Twelve Tables there are still some faint traces left of the notion that expiation was required of a person who accidentally shed human blood.[65]
[61] Demosthenes, Contra Aristocratem, 71 sq. p. 643 sq.
[62] Aristotle, De republica Atheniensium, 57. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, i. 304.
[63] Digesta, xlviii. 8. 14.
[64] von Jhering, Das Schuldmoment im römischen Privatrecht, p. 16. Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht, p. 85.
[65] Mommsen, op. cit. p. 85.