The formula indicta causa is a technical legal term meaning “in the absence of the speech of the defense.” This paper proposes additional meanings of the phrase in Livy 1.51.9. Elsewhere in his work Livy thematically activates the morphology of the adjective indictus; frequent occurrences of both negations and forms of dicere are a discreet commentary on the ethical implications of judicial procedure in which the defense does not have (in-) the chance to address the court (dicere). In 1.49-52, however, the dominant imagery associated with Tarquin the Proud is of literal and figurative “imposition,” and the more recurrent prefix is the directional in-, not negational. This study argues in detail that the alternative, but not mutually exclusive, derivation of adjective indicta from the verb indicere considerably enriches literary interpretation of 1.49-52.
