[1] The XII Tables contained provisions against a certain number of forms of insult, probably only assaults, usually subjecting them to a fixed money penalty.
This crude system, limited in scope and inflicting penalties which with changes in the value of money had become derisory in the later Republic, was then superseded in practice by a series of praetorian edicts.
The first, which came to be known later as "generate edictum" and probably was designed to deal only with the acts contemplated by the XII Tables, provided in terms which, as we know them, cover any form of iniuria, that an actio in factum would lie, in which the plaintiff must specify the nature of the iniuria complained of and the damages he claimed, the case to be tried by recuperatores who would fix the amount of the condemnatio.
[2] The evolution was somewhat interrupted by a lex Cornelia de iniuriis of the time of Sulla, which provided a criminal or quasi-criminal remedy for "pulsare, verberare, vi domum introire" (covering the whole field of the iniuriae dealt with in the XII Tables), and apparently some other proceedings.
[2] It is held, on one view, that this legislation excluded these wrongs from the ordinary actio aestimatoria iniuriarum, till late in the classical age, when a rescript of Septimius Severus and Caracalla restored the right to bring a civil action in such cases.
Like other delictal actions it did not lie against the heres of the wrongdoer, but, contrary to the general rule, it could not be brought by the heirs of the injured person.
It lay only within a year of the event, and, as it rested on outraged feelings, it did not lie unless there was evidence of anger at the outset (dissimulatione aboletur).
In general no action lay unless the iniuria was atrox; if it was, and was intended to insult the master, there was an actio domini nomine.
We are told in varying terms that it might be atrox ex re (or facto) from its extreme nature, or ex persona, the person insulted being one to whom special respect was due (e.g. the patron, or a magistrate), or ex loco, where it was very public.
In later law an extraordinarium indicium for punishment was always available as an alternative, which would be used where the defendant was without means, and was evidently sometimes used in other cases of extreme insult.