variatio

Updated: May 11, 2025

To give such a decision in favour of Virginia, would be a variatio personarum; it would be introducing as entitled to the benefit of the law a class of persons, who were, even according to their own statements, not entitled to vindiciæ secundum libertatem. Besides, and most important of all, the law could act in the former, as any citizen was entitled to plead the cause of one presumptively free.

Livy - The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08