There was a dispute at Locri between two young men about a slave. The slave had been with one of them for a considerable time,
and the other, two days before, had come in the absence of the master to the latter's country house and had forcibly carried off the slave to his own house.
The other young man, when he heard of it, came to the house, seized on the slave, and led him before the magistrates, to whom he maintained that upon his giving proper sureties, the boy ought to remain in his possession.
For he said the law of Zaleucus enjoins that in cases of disputed ownership the party from whom the property had been taken away or abducted should remain in possession until the trial.
The other claimant contended that according to the same law the abduction had been from him; for it was from his house that the slave had been taken and carried before the court.
The presiding magistrates were in doubt about the point and calling in the cosmopolis submitted it to him.
The cosmopolis defined the law as meaning that the abduction always was from the party who had last been in undisputed possession of the property for a certain time.
If anyone forcibly deprives another of property and carries it off to his own house, and if then the former owner comes and takes it away from him, this is not abduction within the meaning of the law.
When the young man upon this felt aggrieve and asserted that such was not the intention of the law-giver, they say that the cosmopolis invited him to state his case according to the law of Zaleucus.
This is that the two disputants should speak before the "thousand" on the subject of the law-giver's meaning,
each with a halter round his neck, and whichever of them appeared to interpret the law worst, should be hanged in the presence of the thousand.
Upon the cosmopolis making this offer, the young man said that the bargain was not a fair one.
For the one of them had only two or three years left to live, the cosmopolis being very nearly ninety years of age, whereas he himself in all likelihood had the most of his life still before him.
Thus the young man's ready wit relaxed the gravity of the court, but the magistrates followed the opinion of the cosmopolis in defining abduction.
Walbank Commentary