This is a bit off of Maria's post, as it is does not concern crime, but rather civil disputes. But I am intrigued about whether the Romans under the Twelve Tables actually executed debtors who could not pay. Only the most fragmentary evidence consisting of commentary centuries later is available concerning the actual language of the tables. But most scholars agree that Table III provided that first the debtor could be put in chains, and after three "market days" if still unpaid the creditors could "cut their respective parts( or shares)". What is debated is what these "parts" represented. Aulus Gellius in the Noctes Atticae says this "terrible" and "cruel" remedy was necessary to "keep faith sacred", although he had not personally heard of anyone being put to death. Of course, he wrote centuries after the law had changed. In my article "The Insolvency Law of Ancient Rome" I take the position that "cutting parts" in fact meant putting to death, although perhaps this remedy was rarely used in practice. Certainly selling the hapless debtor as a slave would make more financial sense, but I suspect the in terrorem effect has been too readily discounted by modern scholars, the majority of whom seem to believe that "cutting shares" meant something else. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that those (like me) who believe otherwise have probalby spent too much time reading The Merchant of Venice. Anyone care to venture an opinion on this, and cite me to any authority one way or the other?