Women were declared "waived" rather than outlawed but it was effectively the same punishment. Among other forms of exile, Roman law included the penalty of "interdicere aquae et ignis" ("to forbid water and fire"). People so penalized were required to leave Roman territory and forfeit their property. If they returned, they were effectively outlaws; providing them the use of fire or water was illegal, and they could be killed at will without legal penalty. "Interdicere aquae et ignis" was traditionally imposed by the tribune of the plebs, and is attested to have been in use during the First Punic War of the third century BC by Cato the Elder. It was later also applied by many other officials, such as the Senate, magistrates, and Julius Caesar as a general and provincial governor during the Gallic Wars. It fell out of use during the early Empire. In English common law, an outlaw was a person who had defied the laws of the realm, by such acts as ignoring a summons to court, or fleeing instead of appearing to plead when charged with a crime. The earliest reference to outlawry in English legal texts appears in the 8th century. The term "outlawry "referred to the formal procedure of declaring someone an outlaw, i.e. putting him outside the sphere of legal protection. In the common law of England, a judgment of (criminal) outlawry was one of the harshest penalties in the legal system, since the outlaw could not use the legal system for protection, e.g. from mob justice. To be declared an outlaw was to suffer a form of civil or social death. The outlaw was debarred from all civilized society. No one was allowed to give him food, shelter, or any other sort of support—to do so was to commit the crime of aiding and abetting, and to be in danger of the ban oneself. A more recent concept of "wanted dead or alive" is similar, but implies that a trial is desired (namely if the wanted person is returned alive), whereas outlawry precludes a trial. An outlaw might be killed with impunity; and it was not only lawful but meritorious to kill a thief fleeing from justice—to do so was not murder. A man who slew a thief was expected to declare the fact without delay, otherwise the dead man's kindred might clear his name by their oath and require the slayer to pay weregild as for a true man. By the rules of common law, a criminal outlaw did not need to be guilty of the crime for which he was an outlaw.