TALION

Latin Lex Talionis, principle developed in early Babylonian law that criminals should receive as punishment precisely those injuries and damages they had inflicted upon their victims. Many early societies applied this eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth principle quite literally. In early Palestine, injury and bodily mutilation as well as theft were considered private wrongs. It was not for the state to punish the offender; the matter was to be settled between the person who inflicted the injury and the one injured. The same attitude prevailed in early Rome. Talion was the ultimate satisfaction a plaintiff might demand, but not mandatory; the injured person could obtain satisfaction with money if he wished. On the principle that two different persons could not have exactly the same bodily members, the Palestinian sages enacted a law by which the injured party could not demand an eye from the person who caused the loss of his eye but could demand the value of his eye. This led to the abolition of talion in Palestine. In Rome by the 5th century BC, fines had begun to replace talion in many instances (see delict). Until the end of the 18th century, talion provided the rationale for such corporal punishments as flogging, branding, mutilation, the stock, and the pillory. The principle still serves as a partial basis for the assessment of fines against minor offenders.