[20] “In the country also lawsuits spring up,” says one of the ancients. Examples of greed and the desire for other people’s property are found not only in the town but also outside its walls, since that desire is based not on differences of situation but on the thoughts of insatiable and quarrelsome men.
[21] And therefore the most law-abiding states elect two kinds of superintendents and magistrates to maintain the general safety and good order, one kind to act within the walls called “town warden,” the other outside them bearing the appropriate name of “country warden,” and what need could there be of the last if there were not people in the landed estates also who lived to do harm to their neighbours?
[22] So if anyone in charge of sheep or goats or a herd of any kind feeds and pastures his beasts in the fields of another and does nothing to spare the fruits or the trees, he must recoup the owner in kind by property of equal value.
[23] And he must suffer this without complaining. The law has shown itself reasonable and exceedingly forgiving in its treatment of him. Though his actions are such as are committed in internecine war, where it is customary to lay waste arable fields and destroy the cultivated plants, it has not punished him as a public enemy by sentencing him to death or banishment, or at the very least to forfeiture of his whole property, but merely called upon him to make good the damage to the owner.
[24] For since it always seeks pretexts for alleviating the state of the unfortunate, so vast is the gentleness and humanity which it owes to nature and practice, it discovered a well-sounding plea to defend the grazier in the irrational and refractory nature of cattle, particularly when they hanker for food.
[25] The trespasser must therefore be held responsible to justice for originally driving the herd into a field where they ought not to be, but should not bear the guilt of all its results, for it may well be that when he perceived the harm they were doing he tried to drive them out as fast as he could, but they as they were browsing on the herbage and taking their fill of tender fruits and plants resisted his efforts.