History of The Law
A Roman law (lex, plural leges) was typically named after the official who proposed it, and never after a defendant. In 227 or 226 BC, Gaius Scantinius Capitolinus was put on trial for sexually molesting the son of Marcus Claudius Marcellus; a certain irony would attend the Lex Scantinia if in fact he had been its proposer. It may be that a relative of Scantinius Capitolinus proposed the law in a display of probity to disassociate the family name from the crime. The law has also been dated to 216 BC, when a Publius Scantinius was pontifex, or 149 BC. The earliest direct mention of it occurs in 50 BC, in the correspondence of Cicero, and it appears not at all in the Digest.
Read more about this topic: Lex Scantinia
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