Definition
A Latin term from Roman law meaning cattle or a beast. In its plural form, pecudes, the term encompassed livestock generally, including oxen and other beasts of burden. The term carried legal significance primarily in the context of testamentary bequests, where a gift of pecudes was interpreted to include working animals such as draft oxen, not merely grazing stock.
Why It Matters in Research
PECUS is a term a researcher will encounter almost exclusively in two contexts: Roman law sources and their English translations, and early common law treatises that drew heavily on Roman property and succession doctrine. It does not survive as an operative term in modern Anglo-American law, but understanding it is essential for reading Digest passages quoted in secondary sources or historical commentaries on bequests of property.
The key research trap is the distinction between pecus (singular, a single beast) and pecudes (the plural), which carried the broader interpretive reach in bequest law. The Digest passage cited across all three source dictionaries — Dig. 32, 81, 2 — addresses the scope of legacies and what animals pass under a general bequest. Researchers consulting that passage should be aware that Roman jurists debated the precise boundaries of pecudes: whether the term extended to all domesticated animals or was confined to those used in agricultural labor. This interpretive dispute has counterparts in early English cases involving bequests of "cattle" or "livestock," where courts similarly grappled with whether working animals, dairy animals, and sheep all fell within the same testamentary gift.
For researchers using Law Mind's corpus on Roman law inheritance and property, PECUS connects directly to broader questions about how Roman legal categories were received and transformed in English equity and common law. The term also appears in discussions of the actio de pauperie — the Roman action for damage caused by animals — where pecus denoted the class of animals whose owners could face liability.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st Ed.), Black's (2nd Ed.), and Burrill's — are in close agreement, differing only in minor typographical and punctuation details. Each defines the term as "cattle; a beast" in Roman law, each notes the plural form pecudes, and each cites the same Digest passage for the proposition that oxen and beasts of burden were included under a bequest of pecudes.
Burrill is marginally more precise in flagging the plural form explicitly and presenting it as a distinct grammatical note, which is useful for researchers encountering inflected forms in Latin source texts. Neither Black's edition adds anything beyond Burrill on the substantive legal content.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the interpretive debate within Roman law itself about the scope of pecudes — whether poultry, swine, or small livestock fell within the term. That question is addressed in the Digest but goes unreported in these dictionary entries, which present the term's meaning as more settled than the underlying sources warrant.
Jurisdictional Note
PECUS has no operative role in any modern common law jurisdiction. Its relevance is confined to Roman law scholarship, civil law systems with direct Roman heritage, and historical research into early Anglo-American property and succession doctrine.