4

Conquests and wars are permanent features of humanity. Men fight and kill each other. What happens after that? The dead are buried, survivors go back home. Others are not dead and yet they do not come home. What has happened to them? They have disappeared and no one knows what has happened to them. Their fate becomes a concern for society, a grief for their relatives, and a legal problem with regard to their family, their property, and their claims. Very early in its long history, Rome amassed one of the biggest armies in the world and had to face unexplained disappearances and answer the legal questions to which they gave rise The history of law has preserved the answers they gave for the centuries that followed. This state of affairs has persisted into the present day, with thousands, even millions of people continuing to disappear, voluntarily or not, all over the world.