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Polybius recounts a dispute between the Illyrians and Rome.74 Ships operated by private Illyrian individuals had attacked a number of Italian trade ships and a Roman embassy was sent to the Illyrian ruler, Queen Teuta, to protest against this behavior. Faced with the charge, Teuta argued that Illyrian rulers did not prevent their subjects from taking plunder at sea. One of the Roman ambassadors responded (“with ample justification,” Polybius finds) that the Illyrian state was responsible for punishing those who committed private wrongs and helping those who suffered them.75 At first sight, this passage seems to suggest that the Roman conception of state responsibility was quite similar to the current principle of due diligence. However, the law of embassy shows that the concept was an entirely different one. According to the jus gentium, ambassadors were considered immune (as in inviolable); their bodies were considered sacrosanctus. 76 Killing or injuring an ambassador was therefore considered an offence to the gods and the ambassador’s people, which justified a war against the perpetrator’s people. The latter could attempt to atone for the offence by extraditing the perpetrator (deditio). However, the injured state could decline to accept the deditio. 77 The right to choose between war and accepting the atonement remained with the injured state. Polybius reports that Leptines, a subject of King Demetrius of Greece, killed Gnaeus Octavian, a Roman legate.78 As atonement, King Demetrius sent 10,000 gold pieces and extradited the murderer to Rome.79 After some consideration, the Senate accepted the gold but decided not to accept the extradition of the murderer.80 Instead, Rome kept the grievance open so as to make “use of the accusations when they wished.”81 The legal principle the Senate’s decision rests upon is remarkable. King Demetrius becomes responsi ble not because he failed to take action after the private individual committed the murder. Instead, the sovereign is responsible solely by virtue of the fact that one of its members breached the jus gentium. The same principle also emerges in the writings of Livy, who recounts how Zeno desperately pleaded with T. Quinctius that the Romans not make the whole city of the Magnetes responsible for one man’s madness.82 Nevertheless, Quinctius “bitterly reproached the Magnetes for their ingratitude and predicted the disasters which would quickly overtake them . . . .”83 Thus, the jus gentium reflects the relationship between state and subject in ancient society. State and subject are not separate units; they are regarded as a single collective. The same principle of collective responsibility could also be found in the early Middle Ages. Municipal legal orders were tribal in character and remarkably similar to each other in content.84 Concentric circles like the ones in ancient society characterized their inner order. Households formed villages, which then grouped into so-called hundreds. A very loosely organized duchy or kingdom was the outermost circle.85 The Church or the Holy Roman Empire might have claimed symbolically to have authority over their constituencies, but not until the latter half of the 11th century did royal and ecclesiastical institutions make a real effort to alter the tribal and local character of the legal orders of Europe.86 Thus, the real international legal order of the early Middle Ages was the law between tribes. Between tribes, the principle of collective responsibility (Sippenhaftung) governed.87 The medieval tribal state was regarded as a collectivity, whose members were responsible for the acts of any one member. The tribal bond sufficed to attribute an individual’s action, wherever committed, to the state.88 Had one member of the tribal entity killed or injured a member of another entity, the whole first entity was responsible and subject to retribution.89 Whether the injury was inflicted with intent or by accident was irrelevant.90 Retribution could be exercised by way of a blood feud, or the injured tribe could choose to conclude a treaty of atonement, which would provide for a sum of money (wer or wergeld) to be paid to the injured tribe.91 In the later Middle Ages, this principle gradually changed. As the units grew in size and had more individual members, the collective responsibility principle softened. The tribe could avoid collective responsibility by withdrawing community protection from the individual actor and evicting the person from the community.92 In theory, the collective responsibility principle still remained valid. However, the tribe was awarded the privilege of retrospectively removing the ground for its responsibility—i.e., the offender’s membership in the tribe.93 After being evicted from the tribal community, the offender became vogelfrei, or outlawed. This meant that anyone could kill him without having to fear a blood feud himself.94 Only in the late Middle Ages did the principle of collective responsibility seem to fade and be replaced by doctrines similar to currently existing ones. Keen recounts an incident from 1446 in which Erard Capdorat, a subject of a French nobleman, was robbed by subjects of the Duke of Burgundy.95 Only after Capdorat failed to obtain justice in the courts of Burgundy did his lord award him a letter of marque authorizing him to take reprisal against the Duke or his subjects.96 Thus, deni de justice, rather than collective injury, had become the justification for reprisal and the ground for responsibility.97 According to Gentili, the notion that faults of individuals are not charged against a community also features in the writings of Baldus de Ubaldi (1327-1400).98