Specifically, if a path is used – openly, not against protests, but without permission of the landowner – for an extended period (20 years) then a permanent legal right to such use is usually established.
[2] The maxim appears to have been a widely recurring rider to the definition of property rights based on possessio (the form of interest in land arising from exercise of control, capable of maturing into ownership or dominium).
In 72/71 BC, setting out some standard defences to a charge of obtaining property by 'force' or 'violence' (uis) in his speech on behalf of his client Marcus Tullius, he referred to the requirement that the dispossessed party's claim to possession not be based upon entry by force, stealth or licence ('cum ille possideret, quod possideret nec ui nec clam nec precario' - 'as long as the other party was in lawful possession and did not gain possession by force, stealth or licence').
[4] And in 63, the year of his own consulship, Cicero attacked the agrarian reform bill introduced by Servilius Rullus for not excluding possession gained by force, stealth or owner's licence from its definition of lawful possessa: ('Suppose he ejected [the owner] by force, suppose he came into possession by stealth or by licence?'
[5] The phrase appears to have been established long before the Lex Agraria of 111, and could be used facetiously or for comic effect beyond the legal profession, as is clear from a passage in the Eunuchus of Terence, a play usually dated to 161 BC.