[7] Some scholars suggest that this statute should be translated thus: "When the parties agree on preliminaries, each party shall plead."
[8] The index hears cases in which a fixed amount is to be adjudged.
[9] The arbiter hears cases in which an indefinite sum is to be assessed.
[10] At this time in the language reus means any litigant; in later Latin reus is restricted to signify the defendant.
[11] Perhaps "on every other day" or "on three market-days" is meant.
[12] This means, we suppose, that the litigant requiring evidence must proclaim his need by shouting certain legal phrases before the residence of the person who is capable of supplying such evidence and who thereby is summoned to court.
[13] Some scholars suggest that the Latin represented by the words "and for matters in court" should be omitted and that the passage should open "For persons judged liable for acknowledged debt", thus restricting the period of thirty days' grace only to matters of debt. Even if this view be correct, it disproves not the probability that the thirty days applied to various kinds of cases.
[14] "Shall cut pieces" (partes secanto) is explained variously: "to divide the debtor's functions or capabilities", "to claim shares in the debtor's property", "to divide the price obtained for the sale of the debtor's person", "to divide the debtor's family and goods", "to announce to the magistrate their shares of the debtor's estate"; the old Roman writers, however, understand by the phrase that the creditors can cut their several shares of the debtor's body!
[15] In primitive times a father can sell his son into slavery. If the buyer free the son, the son reënters his father's control (patria potestas).
Here apparently we have an old formula surviving in a sham triple sale, whereby a descendant is liberated from the authority of an ascendant, or after a triple transfer and a triple manumission the son is freed from his father and stands in his own right (sui iuris).