Lex Cincia
 Pro Per Litigation is PROPER LITIGATION
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An Ancient Roman law prohibited paying fees to lawyers for representing anyone in court: "If no one paid a fee for lawsuits, there would be less of them! As it is, feuds, charges, malevolence and slander are encouraged." - Senator Gaius Silius during Senate debate [47 AD.] of the issue.
Lex Cincia - a law of Ancient Rome prohibiting paying fees to lawyers for representing anyone in court.
The ancient Romans recognized that the danger of an increase in groundless litigation is greater from lawyers’ greed than from innocent errors of pro se litigants.
“During the rise of Rome, its citizens involved in lawsuits pleaded their own cases, as was true everywhere in the ancient world. . . . According to the lex cincia passed by the Senate in 204 BC, the advocati [legal experts] were forbidden from taking fees. During a Senate debate [47 AD.] of the issue, Senator Gaius Silius said:
"If no one paid a fee for lawsuits, there would be less of them! As it is, feuds, charges, malevolence and slander are encouraged.” (Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1956, pg.233). ]
Bibliographical Notes:
Oxford Companion to Law (p.763) defines Lex Cincia de donis et muneribus (204 B.C.) as "A Roman statute which forbade gifts which might impede justice and also donations above a given amount.".
H.F. Jolowicz and Barry Nicholas, Historical Introduction to the Study of Roman Law (3rd edn), identify the lex cincia as a law of 204 BC prohibiting gifts above a certain amount except between near relatives (p 87). They go on to discuss the function of the jurist as legal advisor (pp 88ff). The lack of fee seems at least early on to have been a corollary of the position of the jurist as 'pontiff', the educated patrician dispensing legal advice as one of his social functions.
The lex Cincia was a plebiscitum of ca. 204 b.c. which put a limit on the amount someone could receive as a gift and included a clause which prohibited gifts to be made to people acting as an orator in court (i.e. pleading a case). What survives of the law comes mostly from the Fragmenta Vaticana (298-309), but none of it deals with the orator prohibition. In terms of bibliography, the relevant FV texts can be found in Crawford (ed.) *Roman Statutes* 741-744, along with bibliography and reconstruction of what does survive of the law itself. Crawford includes the following as Bibliography:
F. Casavola, *Lex Cincia: contributo alla storia delle origini della donazione romana* (Naples, 1960).
P. Stein in Athenaeum 73 (n.s. 63), 1985, 145-53 (includes more Bibliography).
Berger's Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law has some other brief bibliographic notes ... most are in various European journals and festschriften.
Important Note: PRO PER LITIGATION SOCIETY DOES NOT INTERPRET THE LAW OR PROVIDE LEGAL ADVICE
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