Note 36 — BOOK VI. CONCERNING CRIMES AND TORTURES.
S. P. (Samuel Parsons) Scott translation
It is probable, from the extreme cruelty of the penalty imposed for professing ignorance of the laws of the land, that this defence had been frequently set up by criminals, and that it had, in not a few instances, been pleaded with success. There is not, in the entire Code, a sentence exceeding this in severity, as the crime itself is supposed to have been sufficiently expiated by the infliction of the Lex Talionis.—[Ed.]