M. Tullius Cicero Pro M. Tullio 9

[9] and though he knew that the Aquilian law ¹ about damage existed, still he thought, that, as in the time of our ancestors both men's estates and their desires were less, and as their families, not being very numerous, were restrained by fear of important consequences, it very seldom happened that a man would be killed, and it was thought a nefarious and unprecedented atrocity; and therefore, that there was at that time no need of a system of judicial procedure with reference to bodies of men collected in a violent manner and armed; (for he thought that if any one established a law or a tribunal for matters which were not usual, he seemed not so much to forbid them as to put people in mind of them.)