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Defamation was undoubtedly linked to iniuria as early as the time of the XII Tables, when verse 8, 4 envisaged light violence intended to humiliate. However, it was not until the III-II centuries that it was legally punished. The offence against the body met the attack on reputation, and it is possible that just as assault and battery were for a time left to private vengeance, the victim of defamation first had to take the law into his own hands. The advent of the praetorian edicts was perhaps more concerned with regulating such private vengeance and providing a judicial channel for conflicts both within the elite and the rest of the community, than with punishing an offence previously unknown or inconceivable without physical injury. The iniuria thus sanctioned those who did not respect the physical and moral integrity of others, a sine qua non of community life.