7 The lex Cornelia on forgery, otherwise called the statute of wills, inflicts penalties on all who shall write, seal, or read a forged will or other document, or shall substitute the same for the real original, or who shall knowingly and feloniously make, engrave, or use a false seal. If the criminal be a slave, the penalty fixed by the statute is death, as in the statute relating to assassins and poisoners: if a free man, deportation.
8 The lex Iulia, relating to public or private violence, deals with those persons who use force armed or unarmed. For the former, the penalty fixed by the statute is deportation; for the latter, confiscation of one third of the offender's property. Ravishment of virgins, widows, persons professed in religion, or others, and all assistance in its perpetration, is punished capitally under the provisions of our constitution, by reference to which full information on this subject is obtainable.
9 The lex Iulia on embezzlement punishes all who steal money or other property belonging to the State, or devoted to the maintenance of religion. Judges who during the term of office embezzle public money are punishable with death, as also are their aiders and abettors, and any who receive such money knowing it to have been stolen. Other persons who violate the provisions of this statute are liable to deportation.
10 A public prosecution may also be brought under the lex Fabia relating to manstealing, for which a capital penalty is sometimes inflicted under imperial constitutions, sometimes a lighter punishment.
11 Other statutes which give rise to such prosecutions are the lex Iulia on bribery, and three others, which are similarly entitled, and which relate to judicial extortion, to illegal combinations for raising the price of corn, and to negligence in the charge of public moneys. These deal with special varieties of crime, and the penalties which they inflict on those who infringe them in no case amount to death, but are less severe in character.
12 We have made these remarks on public prosecutions only to enable you to have the merest acquaintance with them, and as a kind of guide to a fuller study of the subject, which, with the assistance of Heaven, you may make by reference to the larger volume of the Digest or Pandects.
THE END OF THE INSTITUTES OF JUSTINIAN