In classical Roman law, the principal distinction between movable and immovable property lay above all in the structure of possessory and delictual protection. The interdictum de vi became the central legal remedy with a penal character, granted to the landowner who had been violently dispossessed, after the rule had prevailed that only movable things could be the object of furtum. In the recognition of the condictio possessionis, which was available to the dispossessed landowner following the model of the condictio ex causa furtiva, traces of a broader concept of theft remained preserved. Alongside the criminal sanctions provided by the Lex Plautia de vi and the Leges Iulia de vi publica et privata for the violent deprivation of land, the Valentinian law on self-help afforded the possessor an additional layer of protection. Both possessory and petitory civil-law remedies, as well as criminal actions, were, in principle, not mutually exclusive. Despite the exclusion of land as an object of theft (and therefore also of robbery), the protection of the land possessor was by no means neglected in Roman law.
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