Definition
A Roman civil law term designating the offense of stealing cattle by driving them away. The crime encompassed the taking of livestock — particularly cattle — through the act of driving the animals from their pasture or enclosure rather than by simple manual taking. The distinction from ordinary theft (furtum) lay partly in the method and partly in the scale: abigeatus typically implied the removal of animals in numbers, not the pilfering of a single head.
Why It Matters in Research
Abigeatus is a term researchers will encounter almost exclusively in historical sources engaging with Roman or civil law materials. It has no operative existence in modern American or English common law. Its relevance in the Law Mind corpus is therefore backward-looking: the term appears in digest commentaries, civil law treatises, and early American legal encyclopedias that drew heavily on Roman sources when discussing larceny, theft of livestock, or the classification of property crimes.
Researchers tracing the history of livestock theft as a distinct criminal category — particularly in jurisdictions with civil law heritage such as Louisiana — may encounter abigeatus in foundational treatises. The concept helps explain why many early American codes treated cattle theft as a separate and more serious offense than common larceny, a distinction with Roman roots even when the Roman label was dropped.
The Digest reference (Dig. 47.14.2) is the anchor citation across all historical dictionaries. Researchers consulting those sources should be aware that Burrill's entry contains a visible transcription artifact — text from an unrelated definition (vadimonium deserere) appears to have been run into the abigeatus entry, likely due to a typesetting error in the original printing. That interpolated text should be disregarded.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are in close agreement on the core definition: abigeatus is the civil law offense of stealing or driving away cattle. Black's (both editions) and Burrill's anchor the definition to Digest 47.14.2. Bouvier adds the nuance of "numbers," suggesting the offense carried a collective or aggravated character — consistent with the Roman distinction between the abigeus (a cattle thief who stole in herds) and the ordinary fur (thief).
None of the historical sources elaborate on the procedural or evidentiary dimensions of the Roman offense, nor do they explain how Roman jurists distinguished abigeatus from furtum when only a single animal was taken. Researchers needing that depth must go to the Digest directly or to civilian commentators rather than relying on these dictionary entries, which treat abigeatus as a passing reference rather than a developed subject.