Hello. First I have to say I love this subreddit and follow it closely.
Thank you all for the amazing job you do answering questions.
My question comes from reading about the time Caesar first walked on Rome and threatened a tribune of the plebs to stand aside as Caesar plundered the treasury of Rome that was in a temple.
Since cities at the time kept all their treasury in temples, are there any accounts during the time of Rome (from Republic to the fall of Rome in 476) of a group of thieves planning a major heist to take the whole treasury of a city(doesnt have to be the city of Rome here - any city will do).
I would love to know even if they failed. Also, if there any books that talk about it. Thanks in advance for the help.
if its of any help in your search, the terms used then to classify theft and robbery seems to have been: furtum (fur) (seemingly the most common, general) and contrectare (contrectatio), auferre, tollere depending on the situation. (the two latter were like "being caught red handed")
One source of difficulty is the fact that auferre is also a technical term from the delict of furtum. The classical sources, in particular the Digest title at 47.2, show two different possible standards for the actions constituing furtum: (1) merely handling an object that legally belonged to someone else, or (2) actually taking that object away. Both standards are most often denoted in the classical sources by verbs: contrectare is the one commonly used for the first, auferre or tollere for the second.
Frazel, Thomas D. “‘Furtum’ and the Description of Stolen Objects in Cicero ‘In Verrem’ 2.4.” The American Journal of Philology, vol. 126, no. 3, 2005, pp. 363–376.
JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3804936