Note 419 — ROMAN PEOPLE (continued 4)

The fact that words like reus and damnatus were applied respectively to persons who had made a vow and to those who had performed it, i.e. as being liable like a defendant, and then released from that position by a verdict or sentence (see Wissowa, R.K. p. 320), is of course significant of the idea of the transaction in the mind of the Roman, who, as Macrobius says (iii. 2. 6) se numinibus obligat, as an accused person is obligatus to the authorities of the State (Mommsen, Strafrecht, 189 foll.). It is the natural tendency of the Roman mind to give all transactions a legal sanction; but it does not thence follow that the original idea was really thought of as a contract, and we have only to reflect that the final act was a thank-offering to see the difference between the civil and the religious process.