First Sentence

"accordingly if the thumb of a most valuable painter had been cut off beforehand and within a year of its loss he is killed, the Aquilian action lies and he must be valued at his price before he lost his skill together with his thumb. On the other hand in the case of killing a slave who had committed great embezzlements in running my affairs and whom I had resolved to examine by torture in order to drag out the names of his accomplices in dishonesty, Labeo writes very rightly that he must be valued according to my interest in detecting the frauds he had committed and not according to the value of the harm he had done."