When the Romans Conquered Britain In the mid 1st century CE one of the problems they did not anticipate was the rampant fraud being conducted in the bronze trade. Tradesmen who shaped the metal would buy it from merchants who bought it from the miners in the form of bars of bronze, already mixed from copper and tin. The issue was that many bars were of inferior quality possessing too much tin which resulted in brittle bronze. The merchants of course would say that they had been told it was good quality, whereas the forgers would report that it had been discounted for being imperfect batches, good for decorative work but not suitable for tools, to which the merchants were the ones being fraudulent by trying to sell it at full price. Gnaeus Julius Agricola, leader of the Roman settlements at the time, made a ruling forbidding merchants from selling raw metal forcing the Tradesmen to buy directly from the miners which was the first codified example known of the "He who smelt it, dealt it," rule. In clearing the backlog of such cases he also heard a dispute where a tradesman had complained he had acquired some bars of silver which had cores of lead to increase the weight so the seller could charge more for them. The original miner insisted they were of sound quality when he sold them but they had passed through the hands of two separate merchants before reaching the end buyer. Agricola had the three men taken to different rooms and he went to the first, he said "If the one who perpetrated this crime admits to it he shall pay a fine of 10 aureus to the man harmed, 10 times the claimed value of the silver bars. If none of you admit to the crime you shall all be executed. Now, did you commit the fraud?" The man thinks a minute before declaring "I am guilty." Agricola leaves and goes to the second man and tells him the same. This man too claims to be the guilty party. Finally Agricola comes to the third man and gives him the same opportunity to admit to the crime, but this man proclaims his innocence. Agricola wastes no time in sending his guards to behead the third man, for he knew "it is he who denied it, that supplied it."