Note 251 — Chapter VIII

In Cnidus (Bull. de corr. Hell. vii. 62), in the year 741–742 U.C.13–12., some apparently respectable burgesses had during three nights assailed the house of one with whom they had a personal feud; in repelling the attack one of the slaves of the besieged house had killed one of the assailants by a vessel thrown from the window. The occupants of the besieged house were thereupon accused of manslaughter, but, as they had public opinion against them, they dreaded the civic tribunal and desired the matter to be decided by the verdict of the emperor Augustus. The latter had the case investigated by a commissioner, and acquitted the accused, of which he informed the authorities in Cnidus, with the remark that they would not have handled the matter impartially, and directed them to act in accordance with his verdict. This was certainly, as Cnidus was a free town, an encroachment on its sovereign rights, as also in Athens appeal to the emperor and even to the proconsul was in Hadrian’s time allowable (p. 262, note 2). But any one who considers the state of things as to justice in a Greek town of this epoch and of this position, will not doubt that, while such encroachment gave doubtless occasion to various unjust decisions, it much more frequently prevented them.